Berlin: Report on Franco-German agreement on Carney for IMF job lacks any substance

There is no foundation to a newspaper report that said Germany and France had agreed some time ago to support the Bank of England's Mark Carney as a replacement for IMF chief Christine Lagarde, a German Finance Ministry spokesman said.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had on Tuesday reported that Berlin and Paris had originally agreed to support Carney with a view to him taking over at the Washington-based IMF in 2021, though this had been moved forward.

Lagarde was last week nominated to head the European Central Bank. Germany wants a European to become the next head of the IMF, the Finance Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.