The United Kingdom will choose the next head of its central bank in the coming days, before the departure of Mark Carney on Jan 31.

The Financial Times says the frontrunners to take over as governor of the Bank of England include Minouche Shafik, an Egyptian-born British-American economist who was deputy governor of the central bank between 2014 and 2017 and who has run the London School of Economics since 2017. Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, is also in the running, as is Kevin Warsh, a former senior official at the United States’ Federal Reserve.

The Treasury, the UK government department that handles financial issues, said on Sunday a decision could be left until after Christmas because the process of finding a replacement was slowed by the British general election, which was held on Thursday and which was preceded by several weeks of campaigning during which political appointments were prohibited.

After Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a landslide victory in the poll, officials will now turn their attention to the question of Carney’s successor. The decision will rest with Sajid Javid, the chancellor of the exchequer, who is expected to hang on to his job in an anticipated Cabinet reshuffle later this week. The chancellor’s decision will be passed on to the Queen, who will formally make the appointment.

The successful candidate is slated to start an eight-year term on Feb 1.

Carney will take up a new role as the United Nations’ special envoy for climate action and finance, an appointment that was announced ahead of the UN’s COP25 annual climate change conference.

The BBC said Carney was “honored” to have been asked to take on the UN role as the organization grapples with the challenge of bringing “the risks from climate change and the opportunities from the transition to a net-zero economy into the heart of financial decision-making”.

“To do so, the disclosures of climate risk must become comprehensive, climate risk management must be transformed, and investing for a net-zero world must go mainstream,” Carney said.

He will not be paid for his UN role, which will see him attempt to secure private financing to tackle climate change issues.

His possible successor Shafik has also worked at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the UK Department for International Development, while Bailey, who has long been considered a likely successor of Carney, has worked in a wide range of roles at the central bank. The New York Times says other names are in the hat, including Shriti Vadera, a non-executive chairwoman of Santander UK, Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, and Raghuram Rajan, who headed the Reserve Bank of India between 2013 and 2016.

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