Chancellor names two new faces to the Bank of England’s Court
David Craig and Paul Nowak will serve on the Bank’s governing body until August 2030; Hanneke Smits joins in January.
The Chancellor has appointed David Craig and Paul Nowak to the Court of the Bank of England, the Bank announced in September. Both will serve until 31 August 2030. Hanneke Smits will join the Court from 1 January 2027.
The Court of Directors is the Bank’s governing body, responsible for managing its affairs outside monetary policy and financial stability decisions, which sit with the Monetary Policy Committee and the Financial Policy Committee respectively.
Nowak’s appointment brings a trade union voice to the Court’s table at a moment when the Bank is watching pay growth closely for signs of persistent inflation. The TUC general secretary, a former call-centre worker who took over the union body in 2022, has recently led its calls for higher taxes on banks’ profits, arguing that “taxing bank profits to cut bills is plain common sense”.
The Court rarely makes headlines, but it is where the Bank’s independence is given its institutional form.British Journal analysis
Craig, the founder of the financial data company Refinitiv, led its data and analytics division after its sale to the London Stock Exchange Group. Smits, a former global head of BNY Investment Management, succeeds Sabine Chalmers and attends her first Court meeting on 11 February 2027.
The Chancellor said the appointments would strengthen the Court “at a critical moment for the UK economy, providing deep and varied experience to support the Bank in delivering its core missions of monetary and financial stability”. Lord Jitesh Gadhia and Tom Shropshire were reappointed for second four-year terms.
The appointments fill seats on a body whose membership is periodically refreshed by the Chancellor of the day, and they arrive as the Bank navigates one of its more finely balanced periods, with its rate-setters split 6-3 in September on whether borrowing costs should rise.
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