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Sylvain Leduc Leaves Bank of Canada for San Francisco Fed

Sylvain Leduc Leaves Bank of Canada for San Francisco Fed

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Sylvain Leduc will leave his post next month in an unexpected departure for one of the top policy makers at the central bank.

Leduc will return to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where he worked before his appointment to the Ottawa-based bank in 2016, the Bank of Canada said Wednesday. Leduc issued a separate statement to staff, citing “family considerations” for the move, without providing details on what job he’ll do at the Fed.

“Sylvain has been a wonderful addition to Governing Council. We have benefited from his policy expertise and his strong sense of teamwork,” Governor Stephen Poloz said in the statement. “Sylvain’s motivation and leadership has had a powerful impact on our researchers and on the Bank’s capacity as a research institution.”

Louise Egan, a Bank of Canada spokeswoman, said Leduc isn’t moving to take over the presidency of the San Francisco Fed, a position that’s currently vacant.

The departure ends one of the shortest deputy governor tenures of the last two decades -- only Mark Carney’s pre-governor term from 2003 to 2004 was shorter. Leduc is leaving at a crucial time, with the Bank of Canada in the middle of a rate normalization process that has seen it raise borrowing costs three times already since the middle of last year. The central bank’s next decision -- and Leduc’s last -- will be July 11, at which investors are almost fully pricing in another hike.

Leduc, who oversaw analysis and financial stability issues, will be leaving in late July, the central bank said. Before joining the Bank of Canada, Leduc was vice president for microeconomic and macroeconomic research at the San Francisco Fed.

The Bank of Canada said the search for his replacement will begin immediately. Leduc was the only francophone on the governing council, which currently comprises the governor, the senior deputy governor and four deputy governors.

--With assistance from Erik Hertzberg.

To contact the reporter on this story: Theophilos Argitis in Ottawa at targitis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Theophilos Argitis at targitis@bloomberg.net, Chris Fournier, Stephen Wicary

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