Position: Romanian Central Bank Governor
Incumbent: Mugur Isarescu
Date of birth: Aug. 1, 1949
Term: Officially in the job since 1991, he was appointed by parliament in October 2009 for a new 5-year term. Tenure expires in late 2014. Eligible for reappointment.
Key facts: One of the world's longest-serving central bankers, Isarescu has gained a reputation for steady policymaking and a pro-reform stance that helped the country join the European Union in 2007.
The economist, with no political affiliation, has won western praise and respect at home for keeping the bank on a steady course in spite of the country's rocky politics following the 1989 anti-communist revolution.
An economic researcher during the communist era, Isarescu took charge at the central bank in the months following the overthrow of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Officially appointed in July 1991, after the passage of laws scrapping the state monopoly on banking, he served under both the ex-communists who followed Ceausescu and the centrists who ousted them six years later.
A political crisis in a ruling coalition pushed Isarescu to the prime minister's job in 1999-2000, when he managed to foster an economic recovery after painful years of recession.
Isarescu flirted with politics again in 2000 when he bid for the presidency, but his aloof style did not go down well in a country where personal contact and warmth are the norm.
Isarescu is widely supported by political groupings and praised for conducting monetary policy with a steady hand -- rare in Romania, where policymakers often fall victim to political power struggles.
Isarescu's response to the financial crisis which hit Romania in 2008 also won accolades, with the International Monetary Fund crediting him for resisting temptation to slash interest rates aggressively, a move which hammered the forint currency in neighbouring Hungary.
Some economists criticised him for being slow in introducing inflation-targeting, hurting the bank's credibility by dabbling too much in exchange rate management and missing four out of five inflation targets since 2005.
The bank is widely expected to miss its inflation target again in 2010, after the coalition government of Prime Minister Emil Boc hiked value added tax to cap the budget gap at 6.8 percent of GDP, a target set under a 20 billion euro IMF-led bailout.
Isarescu is regarded as one of Romania's most reputed vintners. He has a small vineyard in the southern Dragasani region, where he revived cultivation of "Cramposie" -- a 2,000-year-old grape. (Reporting by Radu Marinas and Ioana Patran; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)