In preparing its submission for the Svensson review, the non-executive directors of our board, who are charged with monitoring the performance of the Governor, have looked at whether they should recommend the adoption of a committee-based decision making structure in place of the current single decision-maker model. The potentially negative features of a single decision-maker model include: •  Exposure to single person risk.
•  Decision-making may be captured by a single train of thinking and result in inferior decisions. •  A public perception may develop that a single individual, the Governor, has excessive power. If such a perception were to develop, the “legitimacy” of the central bank’s operational independence may come under question.