LONDON, April 11 (Reuters) - The Bank of England will soon add Megan Greene, global chief economist of risk management firm Kroll, to its panel of interest rate-setters, replacing Silvana Tenreyro whose term ends in July, Britain's finance ministry said on Tuesday.
The hiring of Greene, who spoke recently about the need for higher BoE rates, could shift the debate on the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in a more hawkish direction, with the outgoing Tenreyro talking about rate cuts.
"While we don't know too much about Ms Greene's stance on monetary policy, we can say one thing: it will be hard for anyone to be more dovish than Ms Tenreyro," said HSBC economist Elizabeth Martins.
Greene's appointment adds a policymaker with financial markets experience to the MPC, after the most recent previous appointment saw former Citi economist Michael Saunders replaced by London School of Economics academic Swati Dhingra.
Before working at Kroll, Greene was global chief economist at Manulife Asset Management and head of European economics at Roubini Global Economics.
In a presentation to investors last month, Greene described the economic fundamentals of Britain's economy as "quite worrying" and warned that a recession was likely.
She said the BoE would need to keep hiking interest rates after March because of strong wage growth and poor productivity - in contrast to Tenreyro who has recently warned the BoE would need to cut rates sooner than previously thought.
"I actually think that Bank of England will end up having to hike more to bring inflation back in line with their target... so the UK has got a tough challenge," she said.
STRUCTURAL BREAK
Like most economists, Greene said Britain's departure from the European Union had hurt business investment, citing "the second the Brexit referendum hit" as a major structural break for the economy.
"Megan Greene's wide experience across financial markets and the real economy will bring valuable new expertise to the MPC," finance minister Jeremy Hunt said in the announcement on Tuesday.
Greene studied for an undergraduate degree at Princeton University and has a masters from the University of Oxford. Kroll currently lists her as working in New York.
She is also a fellow at Brown University in the United States and Britain's Chatham House foreign policy think-tank.
Tenreyro, a professor at the London School of Economics, joined the MPC in July 2017 and will soon have completed her second three-year term, the maximum for an external member of the committee.
The BoE has raised borrowing costs 11 times since December 2021, taking Bank Rate to 4.25% from 0.1% as it tried to keep a lid on inflation and return it to its 2% target.
Consumer price inflation peaked at a 41-year high of 11.1% in October and was still in double digits when February data was released last month. The BoE expects CPI to fall sharply in the current quarter and to be below 4% by the end of this year.
