Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Finance Yair Lapid will meet today after the weekly cabinet meeting to make a final decision on the identity of the ninth governor of the Bank of Israel. "It will be settled," a source close to the prime minister said.
It has already been a month since the Turkel Commission approved the three final candidates for the post: Prof. Mario Blejer, Prof. Zvi Eckstein, and Victor Medina. These three candidates were shortlisted after Prof. Jacob Frenkel and Prof. Leo Leiderman withdrew their candidacies.
However, in both Lapid and Netanyahu's cicrcles no-one will say firmly that the next governor will necessarily be one of these three. A senior source close to the prime minister told "Globes" that the acting governor, Dr. Karnit Flug, had come into the reckoning in the past few days, and so there were in fact four cadidates. One source went so far as to say, "Flug is back, big time".
Flug was the favored candidate of Stanley Fischer, the previous governor, to replace him, but Netanyahu has so far been adamantly opposed to the appointment.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 20, 2013
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