The Bank’s search for a female governor is a good thing

If you’re a bloke in a suit who’d like to apply for the governorship of the Bank of England (deadline 5 June), I suggest you browse the website of Sapphire Partners, the headhunters appointed by Philip Hammond to conduct the search. Run by ex-JPMorgan banker Kate Grussing with an all-female team plus Cherie Booth and Lady (Barbara) Judge on its board, the firm declares: ‘We are trailblazers [as] advocated for women in business.’ You’ll probably already have read the job spec on the Cabinet Office website, which refers to candidates as ‘she/he’. None of which means a man can’t win; the Chancellor himself, in a recent select committee appearance, made more of the need for a governor with credibility on the international central banking circuit than of the gender issue. But you can be pretty sure he has asked Sapphire to come up with a shortlist that’s at least 50-50.

And — let me add, before I’m accused of a thought crime — that’s a good thing: not only because the Bank has fallen behind the zeitgeist in largely failing to appoint or retain women in its top ranks throughout Mark Carney’s governorship but also, as this column has argued ever since the 2008 crisis, because women often make better senior bankers than men, being less prone to machismo. So I’d say Ladbrokes has mispriced the female favourite, Santander UK chairman Baroness Vadera (first tipped here a year ago) at 8-1, compared with 2-1 for the leading man, Andrew Bailey of the Financial Conduct Authority, and 5-1 for former governor Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan.

But there will be plenty more runners declared or dreamed up between now and Hammond’s decision in October. Among the outsiders, I’m tempted by 33-1 on Christine Lagarde of the IMF; and on the assumption, without being indiscreet, that ageism is these days as unacceptable as sexism, I’m up for a flutter on a respected veteran regulator who’s about to replace a bloke in a suit on the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee: Dame Colette Bowe.