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Politico (6 February 2020)

Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor, a contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the “Europe At Large” column.

PARIS

Like a skilled manager hired by a multinational whose board members are at each other’s throats, Christine Lagarde has spent most of her first 100 days at the European Central Bank reaching out, listening, team-building and delivering soothing messages.

To parody one of those equations with which economists bamboozle the uninitiated, the former IMF chief’s start as ECB president might be expressed as: HR + PR + CO2 - € = 100.

Deploying classic human resources techniques, she has charmed a governing council that was riven by her predecessor Mario Draghi’s radical monetary stimulus policies. She has met each member individually, taken the mostly male governors for a tie-less off-site bonding session at a castle-hotel near Frankfurt and joked that she is neither a dove nor a hawk but an owl — “birds of wisdom that can see well in the dark and have a wide range of vision.”

“The mood is much better. We feel she is listening to us,” one national central banker said.

Click for more: https://www.politico.eu/article/christine-lagardes-100-day-charm-offensive/