Giorgos Provopoulos, former Governor of the Bank of Greece, has died at the age of 74.
The news became known on Tuesday night, plunging his family, his friends from business and especially from the world of finance and banking into mourning.
George Provopoulos was born on 20 April 1950 in Piraeus. He graduated from the Economics Department of the Athens Law School and continued his studies on a scholarship in Britain, where he received his PhD from the University of Essex on a scholarship from the State Scholarship Foundation.
From 1979 to 2007 he taught Economics at the University of Athens. In 1990 he participated with Angelos Angelopoulos in a committee set up by the Zolotas government to stabilize the economy. He is politically a member of the New Democracy party and during the government of Constantine Mitsotakis (1990-1993) he served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Greece and Chairman of the Council of Economic Experts.
In 1993, George Provopoulos moved to the private sector, working as an economic advisor at Alpha Bank. In 2004 he played a very important role in the writing of the New Democracy government's economic programme. In the same year he was appointed to the management of Emporiki Bank by Kostas Karamanlis and then oversaw its sale to the French of Credit Agricole.
Between 2006 and 2008 he was Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Piraeus Bank.
In June 2008, the six-year term of Bank of Greece Governor Nikos Garganas, who had been selected in 2002 by the previous PASOK government, expired and George Provopoulos was appointed Governor of the BoG by a decision of the Karamanlis government.
His term of office expired in 2014 and he was succeeded by Yannis Stournaras.
Among others, he has participated as Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Union of Greek Banks, member of the Monetary Committee of the European Union, Deputy Governor of the International Monetary Fund for Greece, Vice-Chairman of the Postal Savings Bank, member of TITAN and the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE).
In 2003, he was awarded the Order of Ethics and Political Science Prize by the Academy of Athens for his book The Dynamics of the Financial System.
