Steffen Kern is Chief Economist and Head of Risk Analysis at the EU’s financial market regulatory and supervisory authority ESMA, in Paris (France). Appointed in 2012, he leads ESMA’s analytical work on financial stability, market integrity, and investor protection in securities and derivatives markets, the institutional investor industry as well as the financial market infrastructure of the EU. He also oversees the authority’s statistical and data operations. Kern is a member of the advisory committee to the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB ATC), co-chairs the ESRB’s Expert Group on Shadow Banking, and serves on various FSB and IOSCO committees.

Before joining the EU’s public service, he had worked for Deutsche Bank, including positions as Director for International Financial Market Policy, as Senior Economist at Deutsche Bank Research, and at the Group Board offices.

Kern is a Professor at the University of Mainz (Germany) teaching international financial market development, risk and regulation. He served as a Senior Fellow of the Transatlantic Academy in Washington (US), and was appointed the 2010 Helmut Schmidt Fellow of the ZEIT-Foundation and the German Marshall Fund. He holds academic degrees in economics, politics, and philosophy from the Universities of Oxford (Great Britain) and Leuven (Belgium) and a doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands).