Kiyohiko G. Nishimura

Deputy Governor, Bank of Japan

Kiyohiko G. Nishimura took office as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan on March 20, 2008.  He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Tokyo, and Ph. D. from Yale University.  He was an Arthur M. Okun Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., before joining the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tokyo where he was Associate Professor and Professor.   He was jointly appointed as Executive Research Fellow of the ESRI of the Cabinet Office between 2003 and 2005, before joining the Bank of Japan as its Member of the Policy Board.

Christian Noyer

Governor, Banque de France

Christian Noyer has been Governor of the Banque de France since November 2003. In November 2009, he was reappointed for a second six-year term. He is a member of the Governing Council and General Council of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Mark Sniderman

Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Mark Sniderman is executive vice president and chief policy officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. He is responsible for guiding the Bank’s economic research and community development efforts.

Dr. Sniderman joined the Bank’s Research Department as an economist in 1976. He was appointed assistant vice president in 1983, vice president and associate director of research in 1986, and senior vice president and director of research in 1995. He assumed his current position in 2007.

Dr. Sniderman served as senior economist for economic policy analysis for the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in Washington, DC, while on leave from the Bank. Before joining the Federal Reserve, Dr. Sniderman held teaching and research positions as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a past president of the Cleveland Association for Business Economics.

A native of Youngstown, Ohio, Dr. Sniderman earned a bachelor’s degree from Case Western Reserve University and master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

John E. Silvia

Managing Director, Chief Economist, Wells Fargo Securities LLC

John Silvia is a managing director and the chief economist for Wells Fargo. Based in Charlotte, N.C., he has held his position since he joined Wachovia in 2002 as the company’s chief economist.

Kozo Koide

Chief Economist, DIAM Co. Ltd.

Kozo Koide is the Chief Economist at DIAM Co. Ltd., formerly DL-IBJ Asset Management, which is one of the top class Japanese asset management companies with about 10.5 trillion yen (approximately 135 billion US$) assets under its management at the end of March 2012.

Manuel Balmaseda

Chief Economist, CEMEX

Dr. Balmaseda has impressive credentials, collaborating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Previously, he served as chief economist at BBVA, the multinational banking giant, and currently teaches macroeconomics at the International Graduate School of Management of Barcelona and Madrid. As global chief economist, he influences business decision at CEMEX, widely known as a leader in supplying building materials and related services. CEMEX operates in more than 50 countries across five continents.

Goro Kumagai

Senior Fellow, Strategic Research Department, Mizuho Securities and Visiting Professor, Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University

Goro Kumagai conducts research on the developments of global capital markets to report Mizuho Securities’ management. His current research interests include the reform of global financial and capital market regulations such as Basel III as well as the development of global accounting standards. He teaches the course on the reform of global financial and capital markets as a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University Graduate School of Management.

Masahiro Kawai

Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank Institute

Masahiro Kawai is Dean and CEO of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Institute. He joined ADBI in January 2007 after serving as Special Advisor to the ADB President in charge of regional economic cooperation and integration. He began his professional career as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (1977), and then he taught as an associate professor in economics at The Johns Hopkins University(until 1986) and as a full professor of economics at the University of Tokyo(until 2008).

Paul McCulley

Chair, GIC Global Society of Fellows

Paul McCulley is chairman of the Global Society of Fellows of the Global Interdependence Center (GIC). The Society, founded in late 2010, had its inaugural event at the Bank of France in March 2012: Re-Examining Central Bank Orthodoxy for Un-Orthodox Times.

Satoru Mizuguchi

Consultant, Public Relations Division, Hakuhodo, Inc.

Mr. Mizuguchi is a pioneer of environmental public relations, whose themes include climate change, chemical issues and sustainable urban development.

Majoring in International Relations at Waseda University Law School, Mr. Mizuguchi joined Hakuhodo in 1981. Hakuhoda is Japan’s oldest advertising agency and Asia’s only communication partner of UNEP.

Since then, Mr. Mizuguchi has pioneered environmental public relations, including the “World Conservation Strategy” (WWF, UNEP, etc.), the “National Campaign to Reduce CO2″, (Government of Japan), the “IPCC 4th Assessment Report”, the “YouthXChange for Sustainable Consumption” (United Nations) and the Deliberative Polling for Energy Choice (Government of Japan).

Takehiko Nakao

Mr. Nakao is currently serving as Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Japan.

In 1978, Mr. Nakao joined the Ministry of Finance of Japan, and since then, has spent most of his career there. During his early years at the Ministry, he worked in various Bureaus such as Tax, Security, and International Finance. From 1994 through 1997, Mr. Nakao worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Washington, D.C., as a senior-level staff economist (Advisor in the Policy Development and Review Department).

Since 1997, Mr. Nakao worked as Director, Non-bank Division, Banking Bureau, and Director, International Organization Division, International Bureau, Budget Examiner, Budget Bureau in charge of Foreign Affairs, Economy, Trade and Industry, and ODA, Director of Development Policy Division, International Bureau, and Director of the Coordination Division of the Bureau. Between 2005 and 2007, he was assigned as Minister at the Embassy of Japan in Washington D.C. After returning to Japan, he became Senior Deputy Director-General of the International Bureau and played the role of Financial Sub Sherpa for G8 Summit, and then became, in July 2009, Director General of the Bureau. Since August 2011, he has been at the current position.

During his service within the public sector, Mr. Nakao published two books, “US Economic Policies” (2008: Chuko-shinsho) and “International Taxation System” (1989: Nihon-sozei-kenkyukyokai).

He also wrote many papers including “International Response to Global Financial Crisis: Future Directions for Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Regulation” (2010), “Reforming the International Monetary System: Japan’s Perspective”* (2010), “Japanese ODA Policy and the New World Trends of Development Aid”* (2005), “Japan’s Fiscal Policy in the 1990′s”* (2001), “Hedge Funds and International Finance”* (1999), and “Evolving Role of the IMF” (1996). (English versions are available for the papers with asterisks*)

He served as Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo during the first semester of 2010 and 2011 teaching international finance for graduate and undergraduate students every Saturday.

He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Tokyo, 1978 and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, 1982. Mr. Nakao was born in 1956 in Osaka, Japan. He is married to Asako with two children.

Daranee Saeju

Head of the Market Operations and Strategies Division, Bank of Thailand

Daranee Saeju is currently Head of the Market Operations and Strategies Division at the Bank of Thailand. Ms. Saeju has over 13 years of experience as a central banker working both as an economist on the policy front and a practitioner on the implementation front. She has worked extensively on monetary policy implementation and operations, foreign exchange intervention policy, capital accounts policy and exchange control regulation, markets developments, central bank acts and balance sheet issues. During 2009-2011, she was seconded to the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the IMF in her role as an expert on monetary and foreign exchange operations and market developments to participate in technical assistance and Article IV consultation missions.

Ms. Saeju obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Rochester in the United States, and a B.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science in England.

Waichi Sekiguchi

Editorial Writer, Nikkei, Inc.

Waichi Sekiguchi is an editorial writer and columnist of Nikkei Newspaper, the largest economic daily in Asia. He is also a newscaster of BS Japan “NIKKEI x BS Live 7PM” program. He joined Nikkei in 1982 and has been covering the ICT and electronics industries over 20 years. He was a Washington Correspondent during the Bush and Clinton Administrations in the early 90s covering the US trade and government issues. Prior to that Sekiguchi was a Fulbright fellow at The Center for International Affairs of Harvard University and a chief writer for The Nikkei Weekly, the English edition of the Nikkei newspaper.

Yoichi Takita

Senior Staff Writer of Nikkei

Business Career:
1981 Joined Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc.
1985 Staff Writer, covering financial markets
1987~90 Zurich Bureau Chief
1990 Staff Writer, covering financial markets
1995 Senior Staff Writer, Economic News Department
2007 Deputy Chief Editorial Writer for Nikkei
2008~09 Senior Staff Writer for Nikkei America
2009~11 Back to Tokyo, Deputy Chief Editorial Writer for Nikkei
2011 Senior Staff Writer, writing columns for Nikkei

Tadao Yanase

Deputy Director-General, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry

Mr. Yanase currently serves as the Deputy Director of General METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry). Mr. Tadao Yanase holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from Tokyo University and a Master’s degree from Yale University in Economics. Before becoming Deputy Director, Mr. Yanase held several positions. From 2004-2007, he was the Director of Nuclear Energy Policy Division. In 2007, he became the Director of Corporate Tax Policy Division. He left that position in 2008 to serve as the executive secretary to Prime Minister Taro Aso, a position he held until 2009. From there he acted as the Director of the Industrial Revitalization Process. In 2010, Mr. Yanase became the Director of the Minister’s Secretariat. He assumed his current position with the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in 2011.