Global Finance - Global Speakers Bureau

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.

Carmen Reinhart was Senior Policy Advisor and Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund and held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s. She serves in the Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisors. She has written on a variety of topics in macroeconomics and international finance. Her work has helped to inform the understanding of financial crises in both advanced economies and emerging markets. Her best-selling book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff) entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly documents the striking similarities of the recurring booms and busts that have characterized financial history. It has been translated to over 20 languages and won the Paul A. Samuelson Award.

Based on publications and scholarly citations, Reinhart is ranked among the top economists worldwide, according to Research Papers in Economics (RePEc). She has testified before Congress and has been listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers, and Thompson Reuters' The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds. In 2018 she was awarded the King Juan Carlos Prize in Economics and NABE's Adam Smith Award, among others.