Honorary Members 

Franco Bruni is full Professor of International Monetary Economics at Bocconi University of Milan and Chairman of the Scientific Committee and Vice-Chairman of UniCredit & Universities Foundation.

Born April 12th, 1948. Degree in Economics from Università Bocconi. Master of Science in Economics from MIT, Cambridge, U.S.A.

From 1994 to 2000: Director of Bocconi"s Institute of Economics. Member of Bocconi"s Centre for Research on Monetary and Financial Economics "Paolo Baffi". Vice-President and scientific director of ISPI, Milan"s Institute for International Political Studies. Member of the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee. He has worked for parliamentary and governmental study groups on the Italian banking and financial system.

From 1991 to 2008, he was Member of the SUERF Council of Management and served as Vice-President (1994-1997) and President (1997-2000) of the association.

Member of the editorial board (former Editor) of the Giornale degli economisti e annali di economia, of the advisory board of the Journal of Financial Stability and of the scientific committee of the Rivista di Politica Economica . Up until 1990 he was a full professor of Economics and Finance at the Università di Brescia. Has been a member of the Founding Committee of the Università di Bolzano, visiting scholar and visiting professor at New York University, University of California at Berkeley, Chulalongkorn University of Bangkok, Università Getulio Vargas of Sao Paulo, University of New South Wales in Sydney, UBC in Vancouver, and Fudan University in Shanghai.

Morten Balling, Professor Emeritus of Finance, Department of Economics and Business, Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University †

It is with extreme sadness that we inform all members of SUERF that our dear colleague and friend, Professor Morten Balling, died on May 7th, 2022.

Professor Morten Balling served on SUERF’s Council of Management from 1994 until 2017, i.e. almost a quarter century. During this long period, he was SUERF’s Vice President from 1997 until 2000 and SUERF’s admirably efficient Chairman of the Editorial Board for almost two decades, between 1997 and 2015. In this function, Morten steered SUERF’s publications with a steady hand, setting the highest standards regarding the quality of contributions and ensuring discipline with regards to deadlines. He never shied away from writing own texts, commenting on analyses of others, or doing detailed editorial work at the final stages of proof reading. He also steered SUERF’s publications smoothly from the paper into the digital age.

We admired Morten’s efficiency, accuracy, his wise comments and advice, his sense of humour and the great enthusiasm he put into SUERF’s activities. Morten’s work ethics and standards are a real inspiration and motivation for us.

At the same time, Morten was a very kind, honest, reliable, and polite person, with whom it was a pleasure to work, discuss, and have a coffee or dinner with. It is a privilege for SUERF that Morten donated so much of his time and energy to SUERF’s development. It was an honour for SUERF and the SUERF community to have him as a friend and role model. On the occasion of receiving SUERF’s Honorary Membership in Helsinki on 14th September, 2017, Morten gave a remarkable speech “Mind the Gaps”, which characterizes Morten’s high scientific and ethical standards. 

SUERF, its Council of Management and the large SUERF Community say farewell to a cherished friend and appreciated colleague. We will keep his memory alive.

Niels Thygesen is Chairman of the European Fiscal Board and Professor Emeritus of International Economics at the University of Copenhagen. He obtained his undergraduate and graduate degrees there and an MPA from Harvard University. After working for the Danish government, Harvard’s Development Advisory Service (in Malaysia), and the OECD in Paris, he held a Chair at the University of Copenhagen for more than 30 years, serving also as Adviser to the Governor of Danmarks Nationalbank, Chair of the Danish Economic Council and member of various expert groups on European monetary and financial integration – the subject area of most of his research and publications over the last four decades – and international economics. He was an independent member of the Delors Committee which prepared the outline of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe in 1988-9, a member of the committee advising the government of Sweden on an exit from the crisis of the early 1990s, a member of the Group of Independent Experts evaluating IMF surveillance following the Asian crisis, and he chaired the Economic and Development Review Committee of the OECD which evaluates the economic performance and policies of member states 2000-8. He is a Founder Member of the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee since 1998 and Honorary fellow of the Danish Economic Association.

Mario Monti was Prime Minister of Italy from 2011 to 2013. In addition, he is Honorary President of Bruegel, a European think-tank for economic policy, and member of the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe in 2020-2030, established by the European Council and presided by Felipe González. He was Member of the European Commission for a decade, first as Commissioner for Internal Market, Financial Services and Financial Integration Customs, and Taxation (1995-1999), and then for Competition (1999-2004). In addition to dealing with major antitrust cases (such as GE/Honeywell, Microsoft, and the German Landesbanken), he introduced radical reforms in EU antitrust regulation and control of excessive market concentrations. He also led, along with US authorities, the creation of the International Competition Network (ICN). He was nominated Member of the Commission pour la libération de la croissance française established by the President of the French Republic Nicolas Sarkozy and presided by Jacques Attali. He has been Coordinator of the European Union for the trans-European project of electrical interlinking between France and Spain. Born in Varese in 1943, Mario Monti graduated in Economics and Business at Università Bocconi and did post-graduate studies at Yale University. Prior to joining the European Commission, he was Professor of Economics at Università Bocconi and then Rector from 1989 to 1994. He served as President of SUERF between 1982 and 1985.

Robert Raymond was latterly the Director General of the European Monetary Institute, the precursor to the European Central Bank, between 1994 and 1998, having previously served as Director General in the Banque de France between 1982 and 1994. He was formerly a frequent editor of SUERF Colloquium Volumes, and was made an Honorary Member of SUERF at the Association’s 40th Anniversary celebration in Paris in 2003. He holds a PhD in Law and Economics from the Sorbonne.

Prof. Jean-Paul Abraham was born in 1930 and is Emeritus Professor at the Universities of Namur and Leuven and also at the College of Europe (Bruges), Belgium. He is a former Executive Director of Paribas Bank Belgium and a former Adviser to Artesia Bank. He was President of SUERF between 1994 and 1997, and in 2003 wrote the Association"s 40th Anniversary Volume - "Monetary and Financial Thinking in Europe: Evidence from Four Decades of SUERF" - which focussed on the output of the twenty-three Colloquia held between 1969 and 2003.

Baron Alexandre Lamfalussy was born in Hungary and studied at the Catholic University of Leuven and Nuffield College, Oxford, where he received his doctorate in economics. He later taught at the Université catholique de Louvain and Yale. In 1963 he was among the founders of SUERF and served as the Association"s first Honorary Treasurer. In honour of his contribution to European monetary and financial issues, he was made an honorary member of SUERF at the association"s 40th anniversary meeting held at the Banque de France in Paris in 2003. From 1976 he was an economic adviser to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel and held the post of assistant general manager from 1981 to 1985. He was then general director of the bank, where he remained until 1993. From 1994 to 1997 he was founding president of the European Monetary Institute in Frankfurt, forerunner to the European Central Bank. From 2000 to 2001 he chaired the Committee of Wise Men on the Regulation of European Securities Markets, whose proposals were adopted by the Council of the European Union in March 2001. As chair of the committee, he oversaw the creation of the Lamfalussy process, an approach to the development of financial service industry regulation used most famously in MiFID - the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.