According to Reuters, The Bank of England's Head of Foreign Exchange and Executive Director for Markets, Michael Cross has left the central bank. The report cites two sources with knowledge of the matter.
According to Mr. Cross' LinkedIn profile he has been working at the Bank of England since August 2000, when he resumed his career at the institution as a Senior Manager of International Economics Analysis. The first position Mr. Cross took at the Bank of England dates back to 1990 when he worked in Clearing and settlement.
Mr. Cross has been mostly committed to the public sector throughout his career, serving at the International Monetary Fund between 1997 and 2000 in a brief interruption to his Bank of England stature.
The position of Mr. Cross has been paramount in the operations of the Bank of England. While being responsible for the FX desk, he managed six traders and the chief dealer. The Bank of England’s foreign exchange desk is responsible for a number of dealings, namely FX hedging operations on behalf of the U.K. government.
In addition, other central banks which hold foreign or domestic currency of the Bank of England are in close contact with the desk.
Mr. Cross' other major responsibility was to manage the reserves of the UK’s central bank. While most of the Bank of England's holdings are parked in government bonds of the most powerful economies in the world, the $6 billion chest stands ready to be used for currency markets intervention.
Since the collapse of the British pound in 1992, when it bent to market pressure and was suspended from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) at the time, the central bank has only been intervening on the currency markets in coordinated efforts with other central banks.
Mr. Cross was the direct supervisor of the chief foreign exchange dealer of the Bank of England, Martin Mallett, who left his position in the aftermath of the revelations around the foreign exchange fixing dealings. Mallet allegedly failed to alert superiors about fixing-related issues. The departure of Mr. Cross is not necessarily related to the foreign exchange fixing scandal.
