(Bloomberg) -- France denied a report that it had made a pact with Germany to back Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to become the next head of the International Monetary Fund.
A finance ministry spokeswoman told Bloomberg that a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung story published Tuesday wasn’t accurate and no such decision has been taken by the French authorities. She reiterated earlier statements that Europe should find a consensus candidate.
European governments traditionally select the lender’s managing director as part of an unwritten pact that allows the U.S. to select the president of the World Bank. While Carney was born in Canada, he holds British and Irish passports.
The FAZ report -- which didn’t identify the source of the information -- said that the governments of euro area’s two largest economies had already agreed some time ago to support Carney for the IMF and the decision was made in the expectation that Lagarde would be in the role until 2021.
The IMF job has come up early after Lagarde was named to take over from Mario Draghi as President of the European Central Bank in November.
Carney’s tenure at the U.K. central bank is due to end in early 2020. The BOE declined to comment on Carney’s behalf. Germany didn’t have an immediate response to the report when contacted by Bloomberg.
Lagarde has stepped back from her duties at the IMF, and her deputy, David Lipton, has been appointed as acting head in the meantime.
European governments would like to nominate a candidate as soon as possible, and support from Germany and France would clearly put Carney as the frontrunner for the IMF, though he may still face rivals. Emerging markets have long argued they have a claim on the Washington-based job given the growing role they play in the world economy.
While further European candidates could still emerge, 54-year-old Carney’s resume is hard to beat. He has governed the central banks of both the U.K. and Canada, helped set regulation for global finance, worked inside the Canadian government, earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford and spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS).