Christine Lagarde succeeds Mario Draghi as head of the ECB

IMF boss Christine Lagarde will, in October, succeed Mario Draghi to become Europe’s first female European Central Bank president. The main question from markets is what will Mrs Lagarde bring to the ECB. Christine Lagarde has always supported fiscal loosening policies and dovish language on monetary policy. During her tenure within the IMF she stood the fund fully behind the ECB when it began its QE programme. Given this we believe the new head of the ECB will firstly support and then implement in October further interest rate cuts into negative territory and maintain another round of QE funding.