Carney spent thirteen years at
Goldman Sachs and worked in their
Boston, London, New York City, Tokyo, and
Toronto offices. His progressively more senior positions included co-head of
sovereign risk, executive director for emerging debt
capital markets, and managing director for
investment banking. He worked on South Africa's
post-apartheid venture into international
bond markets, and was involved in Goldman's work with the
1998 Russian financial crisis. One year later, he was recruited to the
Department of Finance Canada as
senior associate deputy minister, beginning on November 15, 2004. From November 2004 to October 2007, Carney was the senior associate deputy minister and
G7 deputy in the
Department of Finance Canada. He served under two
finance ministers:
Ralph Goodale, a
Liberal; and
Jim Flaherty, a
Conservative. During this time, Carney oversaw the
Government of Canada's controversial plan to tax
income trusts at source. Carney was also the lead on the federal government's profitable sale of its 19 per cent stake in
Petro-Canada.
Governor of the Bank of Canada (2008–2013) In October 2007, Carney was appointed
Governor of the Bank of Canada. He immediately left his position at the Department of Finance to become an advisor to the outgoing governor,
David Dodge, before formally assuming Dodge's position on February 1, 2008. Carney took on this role at the beginning of the
2008 financial crisis. At the time of his appointment, Carney was the youngest central bank governor among the
G8 and
G20 nations.
2008 financial crisis Carney's actions as Governor of the Bank of Canada are said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the
2008 financial crisis. , stands in the back row with other central bank governors during the 2008
G7 finance ministerial summit. The epoch-making feature of Carney's tenure as governor remains the decision to cut the overnight rate by 50
basis points in March 2008, one month after his appointment. While the
European Central Bank delivered a rate increase in July 2008, Carney anticipated the leveraged-loan crisis would trigger global
financial contagion. When policy rates in Canada hit the effective lower bound, the central bank combated the crisis with the
non-standard monetary tool "conditional commitment" in April 2009 to hold the policy rate for at least one year, in a boost to domestic credit conditions and market confidence. Output and employment began to recover from mid-2009, in part thanks to monetary stimulus. The Canadian economy outperformed those of its G7 peers during the crisis, and Canada was the first G7 nation to have both its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment recover to pre-crisis levels. The Bank of Canada's decision to provide substantial additional
liquidity to the Canadian financial system, and its unusual step of announcing a commitment to keep interest rates at their lowest possible level for one year, appear to have been significant contributors to Canada's weathering of the crisis. , speaks at the 2012
World Economic Forum's "Beyond Basel: Financial Institution Regulation" panel". The commitment to ultra-low lending rates led to a spike in housing prices and household debt. In April 2012, Carney acknowledged there were "issues in some segments of the housing market" and some properties in Canada were "probably overvalued" but he was not overly concerned. He stated low-interest rates were not to blame but the onus was on individuals who take out the loans, the banks, and the federal government's mortgage lending rules. Before Carney left for the Bank of England, there were calls to raise rates as Canadians were holding record-level debt and the housing market was overheated. Canada's
risk-averse fiscal and regulatory environment is also cited as a factor. In 2009 a
Newsweek columnist wrote, "Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize." Carney earned various accolades for his leadership during the
2008 financial crisis: he was named one of
Financial Timess "Fifty who will frame the way forward" and of
Time Magazines
2010 Time 100. In May 2011, ''
Reader's Digest'' named him "Editor's Choice for Most Trusted Canadian". In October 2012, Carney was named "Central Bank Governor of the Year 2012" by the editors of
Euromoney magazine.
International organization memberships Carney was chairman of the
Bank for International Settlements'
Committee on the Global Financial System from July 2010 until January 2012. Carney was a member of the
Group of Thirty, an international body of leading financiers and academics, and of the Foundation Board of the
World Economic Forum. Carney attended the annual meetings of the
Bilderberg Group in 2011, 2012 and 2019. On November 4, 2011, Carney was named chairman of the
Basel-based
Financial Stability Board, which coordinates international financial regulatory authorities. In a statement, Carney credited his appointment to "the strong reputation of Canada's financial system and the leading role that Canada has played in helping to develop many of the most important international reforms". The three-year term was a part-time commitment, allowing Carney to complete his term at the Bank of Canada. While there had been no indication of his priorities as chairman, on the day of his appointment the Board published a list of 29 banks that were considered large enough to pose a risk to the global economy should they fail. At his first press conference as Chairman of the FSB in January 2012, Carney laid out his key priorities for the board. In November 2014, Carney was reappointed to a second term as chairman. This second term ended in 2018, while he was in his next post at the Bank of England.
Governor of the Bank of England (2013–2020) On November 26, 2012, Chancellor of the Exchequer
George Osborne announced the appointment of Carney as
Governor of the Bank of England. He succeeded
Sir Mervyn King on July 1, 2013. He was the first
Commonwealth citizen from outside Britain to be appointed to the role since the
Bank of England was established in 1694. The Bank of England was given additional powers from 2013, such as the ability to set bank capital requirements. Although the usual term for governor is eight years, Carney indicated that he only intended to serve for five years and stand down in 2018. , attends a bilateral meeting with
Guido Sandleris, the president of the
Central Bank of Argentina. Before taking up the post, Carney had already indicated disagreement with the Bank of England's Executive Director of Financial Stability
Andy Haldane, specifically on leverage ratios and bank break-ups. He has been quoted as saying that Haldane does not have a "proper understanding of the facts" on bank regulation. In May 2014, Carney warned the UK's heated housing market was the biggest risk to financial stability, and he was considering providing advice on the
Help to Buy mortgage scheme, which some believed was contributing to housing inflation. He stated UK housing prices and the lack of
affordability of housing in the United Kingdom was due to limited supply, and stated that twice as many homes were built in Canada than in the UK, although Canada had half the population. Carney stated foreign cash buyers in the London market were beyond his control but he believed they did not pose a significant risk to the rest of the country. Carney assured the public the Bank was monitoring rising property prices and large-value mortgages to avoid
debt overhang destabilizing the economy. He further agreed to an additional seven months in September 2018, to "support a smooth exit" from the EU, and to a further two months for an orderly transition to his successor,
Andrew Bailey. At the start of the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, as Carney was set to leave the governorship in March 2020, the bank cut interest rates by 0.5% to protect against the pandemic's expected economic shocks. Carney reportedly advised Trudeau on
Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with Trudeau looking to Carney to help Canada get out of its
recession. Due to this, Carney was speculated to potentially become
Minister of Finance, and later, Canadian prime minister if Trudeau resigned. In February 2021, Carney retracted an earlier claim that the billion Brookfield Asset Management portfolio was
carbon neutral. He had based his claim on the fact that Brookfield has a large
renewable energy portfolio and "all the avoided emissions that come with that". The claim was criticized as accounting tricks because avoided emissions do not counteract the emissions from investments in coal and other fossil fuels responsible for Brookfield's
carbon footprint of about 5,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide. alongside Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau, managing director of the
IMF Kristalina Georgieva,
Director-General of the WTO Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and
president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen In 2020, Carney launched the
Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets—an initiative to increase trading of voluntary
carbon offsets— with Bill Winters as Group Chief Executive. The TSVCM is sponsored by the
Institute of International Finance. Carney helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (
GFANZ) at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. He acts as the group's co-chair. From 2022 to January 2025, Carney has also been an advisor to Watershed, a climate tech company founded by Stripe alumni that proposes to be "the platform companies need to succeed in the
climate economy". In August 2023, Carney was named by
Michael Bloomberg as chair of the new board of directors for
Bloomberg L.P. as part of a broader reshuffle of the company's leadership. In September 2024, Carney became a special adviser and chair of the Liberal task force on economic growth. Shortly after the appointment, it was revealed Brookfield Asset Management had solicited the federal government for billion in funds as part of $50 billion Canada-only asset fund. Carney did not need to follow standard ethical disclosures mandatory for prime ministerial advisors because he was employed by the Liberal Party rather than the Prime Minister's Office. ==Political beginnings==