ECB Chief Says She'll Step Down Early

Christine Lagarde is cutting her anything-but-boring tenure at the European Central Bank short. The 70-year-old ECB chief will leave on Feb. 7, reports CNBC, eight months before her eight-year term officially ends in October 2027, after a run defined by the pandemic, and energy shocks tied to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the US-Israeli war against Iran. Lagarde, the first woman to lead first the International Monetary Fund and then the ECB, guided the eurozone from massive bond-buying and negative interest rates to sharp rate hikes as inflation surged past 10%, then back down as prices cooled toward the bank's 2% goal, reports the New York Times.

Her early exit drops into a sensitive political moment: eurozone leaders—not markets—pick the ECB president, and analysts have wondered whether she might step aside while French President Emmanuel Macron still has a say, before next spring's election potentially ushers in a far-right head of state in France. She reportedly has her eye on the top job at the World Economic Forum, according to gossip begun last year by that group's founder, Klaus Schwab. (Lagarde is routinely ranked among the most powerful women in the world.)