Cornelia Holthausen

Cornelia Holthausen is Director General of Macroprudential Policy and Financial Stability at the European Central Bank (ECB), a position she has held since 2021. Her career at the ECB spans more than two decades, beginning as an Economist in the Financial Research Division in 1999 and progressing through roles including Head of Division for Financial Research, Deputy Director General for Market Operations, and Deputy Director General for Economics before taking on her current post.

She holds a PhD in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, an MSc in Economics from the same institution, and a diploma in Economics from Bonn University.

Her research focuses on financial economics, with published work covering interbank markets, liquidity, payment systems, and banking supervision — including papers in the Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. She has also contributed to ECB work on climate change and monetary policy, and on macroprudential approaches to non-bank financial intermediation.

Beyond the ECB, she has chaired the Eurosystem’s Financial Stability Committee (2021-2025), served as an acting member of the Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation under the Financial Stability Board, and was a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (both 2021-2025). Her research has been recognized with the Bocconi University “Business Models in Banking” conference best paper prize and the SUERF Marjolin Prize, both in 2010, for her work on liquidity hoarding and interbank market spreads.