Christine Lagarde has announced she will resign as president of the European Central Bank, according to RTE.ie. Her departure is expected in February, with The Irish Times reporting she will leave the post nine months earlier than planned.
The announcement follows months of speculation about her future, RTE.ie reports. Lagarde's exit opens a vacancy at the top of the institution that sets monetary policy for the euro area.
European Council President António Costa issued a statement on what the Council of the European Union described as her forthcoming departure from the bank. The Council published the statement without further detail in the material available.
Attention is already turning to who will succeed her. Bloomberg reported on a survey naming Bank of Spain Governor Pablo Hernández de Cos as a narrow favorite to take over at the ECB. That finding comes from the survey as reported by Bloomberg and does not reflect a decision by eurozone governments.
The timing means the leadership change will take shape in the early weeks of next year, when the ECB's rate-setting course remains a central question for markets across the currency bloc.
What to watch next: how eurozone governments organize the succession process and whether de Cos's apparent polling lead holds as the February handover approaches.
