Argentina’s Malbec Man Showing Yale Grad How to Manage Peso

Argentine central bank President Juan Carlos Fabrega doesn’t have the Ivy League education to match that of his predecessor, Mercedes Marco del Pont. In fact, Fabrega has no university degree at all.

What he does possess is know-how acquired over a four-decade career at the country’s biggest commercial bank and as a farmer producing grapes for Malbec winemakers in his native Mendoza province. That experience helped guide Fabrega’s decision to implement measures -- including a peso devaluation and increase in interest rates -- that bankers and analysts say have stemmed a plunge in foreign reserves and quelled concern the country was heading for its second default since 2001.