19 Facts About Jean-Claude Trichet

Jean-Claude Trichet was asked to join the non-doctrinal think tank, Bruegel, to consult on economic policy.

In 2008, Jean-Claude Trichet ranked fifth on Newsweek's list of the world's most powerful along with economic triumvirs Ben Bernanke and Masaaki Shirakawa.

Jean-Claude Trichet was born in 1942 in Lyon, the son of a professor of Greek and Latin.

Jean-Claude Trichet was educated at the Ecole des Mines de Nancy, from which he graduated in 1964.

Jean-Claude Trichet became a member of Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty.

In 1993, Jean-Claude Trichet was appointed governor of Banque de France.

Jean-Claude Trichet succeeded Mario Monti as chairman of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission in 2012.

Jean-Claude Trichet was a member of the Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance, which was established by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors for the period from 2017 to 2018.

In early 2021, Jean-Claude Trichet was appointed by the G20 to the High Level Independent Panel on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response, co-chaired by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Summers.

At the height of the euro crisis, Jean-Claude Trichet publicly criticized President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had agreed at a meeting in Deauville in 2010 that sovereign debt could be restructured in a bailout to make private investors pay their share; the plan was never implemented.

At the ceremony for the Charlemagne Prize in 2011, Jean-Claude Trichet called for the creation of a central finance ministry to oversee spending by countries that use the euro.

On 5 August 2011 Jean-Claude Trichet wrote, together with Mario Draghi, a letter to the Italian government to push for a series of economic measures that would soon be implemented in Italy.

In January 2003, Jean-Claude Trichet was put on trial with eight others charged with irregularities at Credit Lyonnais, one of France's biggest banks.

Jean-Claude Trichet was in charge of the French treasury at that time.

Jean-Claude Trichet was cleared in June 2003, which left the way clear for him to move to the ECB.

At the time of Austria purchasing Hypo Alpe Adria from BayernLB in late 2009, Jean-Claude Trichet had lobbied for the deal.

Jean-Claude Trichet has been criticised for the ECB's response to the Great Recession, which emphasised price stability over recovery and growth.

Jean-Claude Trichet was criticized when he refused to answer a question about a possible conflict of interests concerning his successor's involvement at Goldman Sachs before taking charge as head of the ECB.

At age 22, Jean-Claude Trichet married Aline Rybalka, a diplomat and translator whose parents immigrated to France from Ukraine.