No, Raghuram Rajan Is Not the New Governor of the Bank of England

The Bank of England’s Governor is Andrew Bailey, who will stay in office until 2028.

A photo of former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan is being shared on social media, accompanied by a text which congratulates him on being appointed as the new governor of the Bank of England.

However, we found that the claim is false. The bank's website shows Andrew Bailey as its governor who took charge in 2020. Bailey was also referred to as the governor in a recent press conference held on 5 May 2022.

Moreover, this claim has been doing the rounds since 2018.

CLAIM

The post is being shared to congratulate Rajan on his appointment as the Bank of England’s new governor.

Archived versions of more posts on social media can be seen here, here, and here. We saw that the claim was widely shared in 2018 as well.

The Quint received a query for the verification of this post on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We looked up Raghuram Rajan’s name to look for news reports related to this appointment, but did not come across any.

However, on looking for updates on his professional background after his exit from RBI, we came across the website of The University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Chicago, USA, where Rajan is a professor of Finance.

The information is available on the university's website, and the upcoming schedule shows Rajan's classes in summer and winter 2022 as a part of its faculty directory.

Next, we looked for information on the Bank of England’s (BoE) governor. Under the ‘People’ list in the ‘About’ section of the bank’s website, the current governor was identified as Andrew Bailey.

Bailey’s profile revealed that he was announced as the governor in December 2019, and would remain governor until March 2028.

BoE’s verified Twitter account shared a tweet with a video of a press conference on the Monetary Policy Report on 5 May. About 36 seconds into this video, one of the panelists is identified as “Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England.”

The Quint reached out to the Bank of England, which sent us the same link to the 'Governors' section as we have shown above.

We have also reached out to Rajan and the story will be updated as and when we receive a response.

Evidently, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan was not appointed as the governor of the Bank of England. Andrew Bailey has been the Bank’s governor since 2020 and has been appointed as such for a period of eight years.

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