Papademos Appoints Sachinidis as Finance Minister

Filippos Sachinidis, who has served as the deputy and then alternate minister at Greece’s finance ministry since 2009, will be the new finance minister, replacing Evangelos Venizelos, who stepped down to lead the socialist Pasok party.
Sachinidis, who will be sworn in at 2:45 p.m. local time, according to an e-mailed statement from Prime Minister Lucas Papademos’s office today. The new minister, born in 1963, takes on the post after Venizelos tendered his resignation to focus on national elections.
Sachinidis, a Pasok lawmaker who has represented the Larisa constituency since 2007, served as deputy finance minister from 2009, when Socialist Pasok won general elections, and was promoted to alternate finance minister in Papademos’s government. He did postgraduate studies in Economics at Queens College, in New York City, and has a PhD from the University of Manchester, where he lectured at the School of Administration between 1991 and 1994.
As finance minister Sachinidis will be responsible for following through on commitments made by Greece to secure receipt of the second bailout and to work with other ministers to identify possible spending cuts for 2013 and 2014.
He will attend his first Cabinet meeting as finance minister today.
(source: Bloomberg)