ECB Pioneer Confronts Too-Big-to-Fail Banks With Newly Won Clout

Sirkka Hamalainen, Finland’s first female central bank governor and a founding member of the European Central Bank, is returning to the region’s highest policy circles to help reshape its banks.

“The only thing which is still missing in the banking union structure is the question of how to deal with too-big-to-fail banks,” Hamalainen said in an interview in Helsinki on April 11, three weeks before taking up her role as a member of the ECB’s new Supervisory Board. “The link between the banks and the sovereigns will never be totally and finally broken, but certainly it will be weakened crucially. The principle that the losses are socialized and the profits privatized can’t be accepted in the future. Both must be privatized.”