FRANKFURT, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell will
step down from the European Central Bank Executive Board at the
end of May, when her non-renewable eight-year term ends.
The two candidates to replace her are Belgium's Peter Praet
and Slovakia's Elena Kohutikova. Sources have told Reuters Praet
performed much better in the hearings, and a German newspaper
said on Monday he would get the job.
The six-member board is appointed by euro zone heads of
government to run the central bank's day-to-day business. The
board consists of the ECB president, vice-president and four
members.
Executive board members also have a seat on the ECB's
policymaking Governing Council. Praet's selection would leave
the Governing Council an all-male club for the first time in the
central bank's 12-year history.
PETER PRAET, 62
Praet is seen as the frontrunner for the Executive Board
job. A successful candidacy would be third time lucky for the
Belgian -- a candidate twice before for jobs on the board.
He is believed to be centrist on monetary policy, perhaps
slightly on the dovish side, meaning he is more likely to take
growth prospects into account in the conduct of monetary policy
than strict inflation hawks do.
* Praet was born on Jan. 20, 1949
* As the executive director of the Belgian central bank, his
responsibilities include financial stability and payment
systems.
* German-born Praet earned a Ph.D. in economics from the
Free University of Brussels in 1980 and has worked in the public
and private sectors, as well as teaching at university.
* The former International Monetary Fund economist is
currently a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision
and an alternate member of the Bank for International
Settlements' Global Economy Meeting.
* While an expert in economics and banking, he has never
been much of an investor himself.
* He is an early bird who typically starts his working day
before 7. His desk in the central bank, overlooking a lawn in
central Brussels, is cluttered with books and documents.
ELENA KOHUTIKOVA, 57
An economist by training, Kohutikova began her career in the
banking sector in former Czechoslovakia. Her husband was killed
in a car crash in the 1980s and she raised their two daughters
as a single mother, while also pursuing her career.
She was at Slovakia's central bank when the country kicked
off its accession process to the euro zone, which concluded in
January 2009, and played a key role when entering ERM-II, the
"waiting room" for the euro.
Believed by analysts to be middle-of-the-road on monetary
policy, she currently works in the private sector as a board
member of Vseobecna Uverova Banka (VUB) -- the Slovak unit of
Italy's Intesa SanPaolo <ISP.MI>
During her stay at the Slovak central bank, she was in
charge of monetary policy issues, financial markets operations
and risk management.
* Kohutikova was born on April 3, 1953 in the central Slovak
town of Nitra. She studied at the University of Economics in
Bratislava and later spent eight years researching for a
doctorate at the Institute of Economics, also in Bratislava.
* She joined the State Bank of Czechoslovakia in 1990 and
after the establishment of the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS)
in 1993 she became a chief executive director of its economic
division.
* In 1994, the Slovak government made her a member of the
NBS board. From March 2000, she was deputy NBS governor for a
six-year term.
* Kohutikova has been at VUB since October 2006.
* In late 2009, the year Slovakia joined the euro, she said:
"The introduction of the euro was a special moment for me
because I think I felt for the first time in my life that my
dream was fulfilled and I am now a 100 percent European woman."
(Reporting by Sakari Suoninen, Philip Blenkinsop, Paul Carrel
and Martin Santa; Editing by Catherine Evans)
