Athanasios Orphanides

Athanasios Orphanides (born 22 March 1962) is a Cypriot economist who served as Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus between 3 May 2007 to 2 May 2012 and as a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank between 1 January 2008 and 2 May 2012.

Prior to his appointment as governor, he served as senior adviser at the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in the US, where he started his professional career as an economist in 1999. While at the Federal Reserve he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in macroeconomics and monetary economics at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University.

He holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics as well as PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

On 29 April 2012 President Demetris Christofias announced that Panicos O. Demetriades would succeed Orphanides as governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus effective 3 May 2012. Orphanides is a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management.

After his mandate as governor of the ECB, Orphanides has repeatedly criticized the ECB's reliance on private credit ratings agencies for accepting assets as eligible for the ECB's monetary refinancing operations. In a September 2020 study co-authored with Yvan Lengwiler for the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Orphanides provided suggestions for the ECB's monetary policy strategy review. Provided by Wikipedia