Masaaki Shirakawa keynote speaker

Masaaki Shirakawa is a Japanese economist, central banker and the 30th Governor of the Bank of Japan (BOJ). A sure-footed public speaker, and an international diplomat, Masaaki is highly regarded as a global policy leader in economics and finance. He ranked 6th on the world’s most powerful by Newsweek in 2008.

Having served four decades at the BOJ, his career has encompassed both monetary policy and financial stability, alongside domestic and international operations. As well as acting as the bank’s Governor from 2008 to 2013, Masaaki held other key positions including Chairman of its policy board, and as Executive Director, where he was responsible for laying the groundwork of Japanese monetary policy decisions.

He also had extensive international experience, serving as the General Manager for the Americas and as the Advisor to the Governor for International Capital Markets. From 2011 to 2013, he was also concurrently Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Since leaving the BOJ, Masaaki has taken the position of Special Professor of International Politics, Economics and Communication at Aoyama Gakuin University, and is a member of the Group of Thirty (G30). The latter is a private, non-profit, international body composed of senior private and public sector leaders as well as academia that aims to deepen the understanding of international economic and financial issues. In 2014, he was appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.

He also works for the Promontory Financial Group – a premier strategy, risk-management, regulatory, and compliance consulting firm for financial services firms worldwide – as a senior adviser and a member of the firm’s global advisory board.