Hubert Ansiaux (

Ixelles ( French, ) or (Dutch, ), is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located to the south-east of Brussels' city centre, it is geographically bisected by the City of Brussels. It is also bordered by the muni ...

, 24 November 1908 –

Uccle Uccle () or Ukkel () is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. In common with all of Brussels' municipalities, it is legally bilingual (French–Dutch). It is generally considered an affluent area of the city a ...

, 9 April 1987) was a governor of the

National Bank of Belgium The National Bank of Belgium (NBB; nl, Nationale Bank van België, french: Banque nationale de Belgique, german: Belgische Nationalbank) has been the central bank of Belgium since 1850. The National Bank of Belgium was established with 100% pr ...

(NBB) from 1957 until 1971. After he graduated from the

Solvay Business School The Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (abbreviated as SBS-EM and also known as simply Solvay) is a school of economics and management and a Faculty of the Université libre de Bruxelles, a French-speaking private research univ ...

, he joined the National Bank of Belgium in 1935. Before the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he accompanied the evacuation of the NBB’s last consignment of assets to England, thereby safeguarding the assets of the NBB from the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

s. In 1941 Hubert Ansiaux left for the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, and in the same year he was appointed as director in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, where he was to succeed

Camille Gutt Camille Gutt (14 November 1884 – 7 June 1971), born Camille Guttenstein, was a Belgian economist, politician, and industrialist who served as the first managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1946 to 1951. He was the arc ...

. In London, he was in charge of the practical management of the Bank in London, together with Adolphe Baudewyns. After the war, he was in charge of the NBB's Foreign Affairs department and he was closely involved in the post-war currency reform (Operation Gutt). Hubert Ansiaux supported the European integration, and from 1947 up to 1955 he was president of the Intra-European Payments Committee which had been created within the

Organisation for European Economic Cooperation The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...

and served on the board of directors of the

European Payments Union The European Payments Union (EPU) was an organization in existence from July 1950 to December 1958, when it was replaced by the European Monetary Agreement. With the end of World War II, economic depression struck Europe. Of all the non-neutral ...

from 1950 up to 1955. From 1944 to 1954 he worked as deputy administrator at the

Bank for International Settlements The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international financial institution owned by central banks that "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks". The BIS carries out its work thr ...

, and in 1946 he became administrator of the

International Bank for Reconstruction and Development The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) is an international financial institution, established in 1944 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, that is the lending arm of World Bank Group. The IBRD offers l ...

. Hubert Ansiaux was involved in setting up the

International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster globa ...

where he would later advocate the creation of the special drawing rights. Ansiaux was appointed as vice-governor of the NBB in 1954, and as its governor in 1957. He held the position of central banker during the sixties, until the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. As governor of the NBB Ansiaux continued to play a leading role in European monetary cooperation. In 1967 he was appointed as president of the Committee of Governors of the Central Banks of the Member States of the

EEC The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organization created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisb ...

. In 1970 he contributed to the Werner Report with the first plans for

Economic and Monetary Union An economic and monetary union (EMU) is a type of trade bloc that features a combination of a common market, customs union, and monetary union. Established via a trade pact, an EMU constitutes the sixth of seven stages in the process of economic ...

. Ansiaux resigned, after a conflict with the government, as governor of the NBB in 1971.

Sources

Letter from Hubert Ansiaux to Paul van Zeeland (Brussels, 27 March 1950)
* Organization for European Economic Cooperation, International Organization, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Aug., 1950), pp. 520–528 * België en zijn buitlandse politiek 1830 - 1990, Van Halewyck • 1998 • * Kurgan–van Henteryk Ginette, (1997), “Hubert Ansiaux”, in Nouvelle Biographie Nationale, Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, vol. 4, pp. 11–13. * Van Der Wee, Herman et Monique Verbreyt "A Small Nation in the Turmoil of the Second World War: Money, Finance and Occupation (Belgium, its Enemies, its Friends, 1939-1945)". Leuven, Leuven University Press, 2009. 494 pp. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Ansiaux, Hubert 1987 deaths Governors of the National Bank of Belgium Belgian people in the United Kingdom during World War II 1908 births People from Ixelles 20th-century Belgian civil servants