It's been a busy year for all of the people in this list. But we think 2022 could shape up to be even busier for them. From interest rates to artificial intelligence, here are five people worth watching as the new year unfolds.
Rishi Sunak
It could be a very significant year for Rishi Sunak. Not only is the Richmond MP Chancellor of the Exchequer and current resident at Number 11 Downing Street, he is the obvious “safe pair of hands” candidate in the increasingly-likely-looking event of a Tory leadership challenge. Having carefully curated his public image as a politician sympathetic to the needs and aspirations of business and workers alike, Sunak’s top team may well look to capitalise should the moment arise next year.
Janet Yellen
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is the is the first person in American history to have led the White House Council of Economic Advisors, the US Federal Reserve, and the government’s Treasury Department. It is thought that last week’s Bank of England (BoE) rate rise was closely linked to the Fed’s own signalling of successive rate rises next year. Though she is now at the US Treasury, you can be sure her voice will be a significant one amid all the noise next year.
Jensen Huang
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is not yet a household name like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, but he probably should be. The Taiwanese-American billionaire founded Nvidia in 1993, and is credited with handing the videogaming and computer industries with leaps forward in artificial intelligence and deep learning technology. A softly-spoken leather jacket-clad entrepreneur, Huang landed himself in Time magazine’s 2021 list of 100 most influential people (above Musk), you can be sure we’ll be hearing more about him next year.
Olaf Scholz
Angela Merkel’s tenure as chancellor of the Bundesrepublik is definitively over. Step forward former Hamburg mayor Olaf Scholz, who faces a pile of challenges in overseeing German’s largest economy. Covid-19, European economic performance, and the relationship between the Eurozone and another republic with a flag much redder than its own are just three. As finance minister during the Merkel era, Scholz acquired a reputation for being a technocrat, but he will now have to adopt a different persona entirely if he is to establish a consensus on Germany’s future.
Catherine L Mann
Catherine L Mann is among only two women sitting on the BoE’s monetary policy committee, having commenced her tenure in September this year. Before joining the MPC, she was global chief economist at Citi, and had previously been chief economist and head of the economics department at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). An expert in US monetary policy and inflation, Mann said in February that businesses’ ability to set prices – rather than just absorb increased costs from suppliers in their margins – would be crucial in avoiding further economic turmoil. She will play a key role in the BoE's 2022.
.jpg)
