Biography

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi is currently the Chairman of Société Générale.
He is also a CEPR Distinguished Fellow and a Senior Fellow at LUISS School of European Political Economy in Rome. He is Chairman of the Board of the Pecci Museum of Contemporary Art in Prato. He is the Honorary President of the Italian Alumni of the University of Chicago. From June 2005 to December 2011 he was a Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank.
Over the last 20 years he held the position of Chairman of the board of Italgas, SNAM and SACE, and was member of the Board of Finmeccanica, MTS, the European Investment Bank, Morgan Stanley International and Tages Holding. He has been Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and was the first Chairman of Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, a cultural institution in Florence.
He started his career in 1983 as an Economist in the Research Department of the Banca d’Italia. He moved in 1994 to the European Monetary Institute, to head the Policy Division, preparing for the creation of the ECB. In 1998 he was appointed Director General for International Affairs in the Italian Treasury.
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), a Master’s degree from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Chicago.
He is author of several articles and books on international and European monetary and financial issues (available in www.lorenzobinismaghi.com), in particular “Austerity: European Democracies against the Wall” (CEPS, July 2013), “33 false verità sull’Europa” (Il Mulino, April 2014) and “La tentazione di andarsene: fuori dall’Europa c’è un futuro per l’Italia?” (Il Mulino, May 2017).