Mr Jörgen Holmquist

Jörgen Holmquist, is the Chair of the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA), which independently establishes the Code of Ethics for auditors and accountants, world-wide, who are members of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). He is also the Chair of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA), a Special Advisor to European Commissioner Maria Damanaki and a Senior Advisor at Interel Group.

He is a former Director General for the European Single Market and Financial market regulation in the European Commission and a former Budget Director in the Swedish Ministry of Finance.

As Director General he was responsible in 2007-2010 for developing the European Union's (EU) regulatory response to the financial crisis. This included preparation of the EU roadmaps and legislative program to deal with the financial crisis, and specifically the restructuring of the regulatory/supervisory system, new legislation concerning bank capital, derivatives, credit-rating agencies, investment funds, insurance companies and many other related areas. He was a member of the EU Economic and Financial Committee and chaired the European Corporate Governance Forum. He represented the European Commission in the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and in bilateral contacts with the US, Brazil, China, India, Japan and Russia. During this period he was also responsible for the European Single Market, particularly the free movement of services, capital and labour.

As Director General he was responsible for developing and reforming the European Union maritime and fisheries policies in the period 2002-2006 and in 2011-2012 he served as Senior Advisor to the European Commission Task Force for Greece.

Before joining the European Commission in 1997, he worked in the Swedish Ministry of Finance for twenty years, dealing with economic policy, particularly the public finances and public sector expenditure. In the mid-1990s, he served as Budget Director in the Ministry of Finance and was responsible for developing a new budget and public expenditure policy framework when Sweden faced very large public sector deficits after the financial crisis in the early 1990s. This policy framework is still in use and has made an important contribution to the very strong public finances in Sweden, including substantial surpluses in the public sector and a reduction of gross public sector debt from 76% to 32% of GDP over a 17 year period.

As a Ministry of Finance official, he was posted to the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C. 1987-1993.

Jörgen Holmquist holds a degree in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Stockholm (Sweden) and is a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. In 2009 the Financial Times named him one of the 30 people in Brussels most influential on EU policy and legislation.