Head of BIS digital currency hub leaves post early

LONDON (Reuters) -The former Swedish central banker leading the Bank for International Settlements' work on digital currencies, Cecilia Skingsley, is to leave the Switzerland-based umbrella body two years early to take a government job back in her homeland.

Skingsley began a five-year term as head of the BIS' 'Innovation Hub' in September 2022 but the ex-Riksbank deputy governor will leave to take up a role next month as County Governor of the County Administrative Board of Stockholm.

The BIS' innovation unit was set up in 2019 to identify and develop new technologies and rapidly expanded to seven financial centres from London to Hong Kong.

Reports earlier this year, however, said it was set to be pared back by new BIS General Manager Pablo Hernandez de Cos who takes the helm in July.

Central bank digital currencies in particular have become a geopolitical hot topic and late last year the BIS suddenly quit a flagship project it had been collaborating on with China and a number of other Asian central banks.

The BIS' current chief Agustín Carstens said that under Skingsley, the Innovation Hub had made, "great strides towards fulfilling our strategic goal of helping central banks face the challenges of the future".

The central bankers' central bank, as it is dubbed, added that it would announce the recruitment process for her successor "in due course" with Deputy General Manager and former Swiss central banker Andréa Maechler standing in in the interim.

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)