By Kerin Hope, Financial Times
Antonis Samaras, the prime minister, had been expected to launch a cabinet shake-up immediately after the vote but was forced to delay it because of problems finding a successor to Yiannis Stournaras, the outgoing finance minister who is expected to be appointed governor of the central bank this week.
“We needed someone with a deep knowledge of the economy who would ensure continuity of policies that have gained us credibility with markets and are gradually taking us out of the crisis,” a senior government official said.
Mr Hardouvelis, a US-trained economist, heads the economic team at Eurobank, the fourth largest Greek lender, and also holds a chair in banking and financial economics at Greece’s University of Piraeus. He has steered clear of political affiliations, even though he served in the early 2000s as an economic adviser to Costas Simitis, the prime minister who took Greece into the eurozone.
“He’s soft-spoken but he’ll stand up to the troika in negotiations, no question about it,” said a colleague at Eurobank, referring to Greece’s sometimes stormy relationship with officials sent to monitor the bailout by the commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank.
Confirmation of Mr Stournaras’s appointment as Bank of Greece governor is expected this week. He would replace George Provopoulos, whose term is due to end. During the height of the financial crisis, Mr Provopoulos helped to avert the collapse of Greece’s banking system amid fears the country would crash out of the euro.
The new cabinet is dominated by MPs from New Democracy, even though Evangelos Venizelos, leader of its coalition partner, the PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), remains deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs.
Andreas Loverdos, a former Pasok social welfare minister who launched a harsh reform of the pension system during Greece’s first bailout programme, was appointed education minister. Mr Loverdos has been given a brief to complete an overhaul of university administration and dismiss thousands of “perpetual students” who failed to meet the 10-year deadline for obtaining a first degree.
