HISTORIC PRESS RELEASE : Gus O’Donnell as Director of the Treasury’s Macroeconomic Policy and Prospects Directorate [November 1997]
The press release issued by HM Treasury on 17 November 1997.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has, with the agreement of the Prime Minister, appointed Mr Gus O’Donnell as Director of the Treasury’s Macroeconomic Policy and Prospects Directorate. Mr O’Donnell succeeds Sir Alan Budd who retired from the Treasury on 14 November. In addition to the existing functions of the MPP Directorate, Mr O’Donnell has been asked to take responsibility for, and give additional emphasis to, long-term economic analysis across the range of Treasury policies and interests. He will also be head of the Government Economic Service.
Notes for Editors
1. Mr O’Donnell will be head the Treasury’s Macroeconomic Policy and Prospects Directorate. The responsibilities of the Directorate include fiscal and macroeconomic policy, economic prospects, EMU, debt and resource management and the Bank of England Bill. He will normally attend meetings of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee as the Treasury representative. This is in addition to the responsibility for long-term economic analysis announced above.
2. Mr O’Donnell will also be head of the Government Economic Service, consisting of around 520 economists working in all the major Government Departments.
3. Mr O’Donnell is 45. He is currently the Economic Minister at the British Embassy in Washington and the UK’s Executive Director of the IMF and World Bank. He took his first degree at Warwick University and a second degree at Oxford. He lectured in Economics at Glasgow University and then joined the Treasury as a Senior Economic Assistant in 1979. In a varied career, Mr O’Donnell has not only filled a number of economic posts in the Treasury but has served as the First Secretary (Economics) in Washington and as Press Secretary to both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. Before returning to Washington earlier this year, he was a Deputy Director in the Treasury, responsible for monetary policy and EMU.
