Lagarde's ECB exit date to be set meeting by meeting

The European Central Bank has made Christine Lagarde's departure subject to incoming data. She is due to step down on 7 February 2027, nine months before her term ends. That date, officials now stress, is guidance rather than a promise.

The governing council will review the resignation at each policy meeting. If core inflation behaves, she goes. If it wobbles, the council may hold her in post or extend her by twenty-six days at a time.

"Markets need certainty about when certainty will be available," a spokesman said, handing out a twenty-six-page note on the matter. "We are not pre-committing to a farewell path."

Bond traders spent Monday trying to price a goodbye. Lagarde is widely tipped to run the World Economic Forum, which has been advised to keep an eye on the flash estimates. The eurozone, meanwhile, carries on with weak growth and sticky prices. It has done so through several presidents and expects to outlast this one, whenever this one turns out to be.

I have watched European money men promise firm exits before. The last time one was this data-dependent, it was September 1992, and it happened on a Wednesday.