Urban Bäckström (born 25 May 1954,

Sollefteå Sollefteå () is a locality and the seat of Sollefteå Municipality in Västernorrland County, Sweden with 8,562 inhabitants in 2010. The earliest written account on Sollefteå is found in a script dating back to 1270. During this time the name o ...

, Västernorrlands län) is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

who was CEO of the

Confederation of Swedish Enterprise The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise or Swedish Enterprise ( sv, Svenskt Näringsliv) is a major employers' organization for private sector and business sector companies in Sweden. It has 49 member associations representing 60,000 member comp ...

from 2005 to 2014 and governor of the Bank of Sweden from 1994 to 2002.

Personal

Bäckström grew up in

Visby Visby () is an urban area in Sweden and the seat of Gotland Municipality in Gotland County on the island of Gotland with 24,330 inhabitants . Visby is also the episcopal see for the Diocese of Visby. The Hanseatic city of Visby is arguably th ...

and

Helsingborg Helsingborg (, , , ) is a city and the seat of Helsingborg Municipality, Scania (Skåne), Sweden. It is the second-largest city in Scania (after Malmö) and ninth-largest in Sweden, with a population of 113,816 (2020). Helsingborg is the cent ...

and graduated with a degree in

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

from Stockholm University. He is married to Ewa, who works for SAS. The couple has two children.

Career

Urban Bäckström started his career at the Ministry of Finance during the

Thorbjörn Fälldin Nils Olof Thorbjörn Fälldin (24 April 1926 – 23 July 2016) was a Swedish politician. He was Prime Minister of Sweden in three non-consecutive cabinets from 1976 to 1982, and leader of the Swedish Centre Party from 1971 to 1985. On his ...

government. He was later the chief economist for the

centre-right Centre-right politics lean to the right of the political spectrum, but are closer to the centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the economy, moving away from the nobility and ...

Moderate Party The Moderate Party ( sv, Moderata samlingspartiet , ; M), commonly referred to as the Moderates ( ), is a liberal-conservative political party in Sweden. The party generally supports tax cuts, the free market, civil liberties and economic lib ...

. While state secretary at the Ministry of Finance he was involved among other things in the management of Sweden's financial crisis of the early 1990s. In 1994 he was appointed governor of the Bank of Sweden. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Bäckström worked to restabilize the krona, which had begun to be affected by the worldwide crisis during the second quarter of 1998. As one of his duties as governor, he served on the board of directors of the

Bank for International Settlements The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international financial institution owned by central banks that "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks". The BIS carries out its work thr ...

. Having resigned in 2002, he was appointed CEO of Skandia Liv, part of the Skandia group of

insurance companies Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

. In 2005 he became CEO of the

, which represents larger companies and employers. He has been a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences or ''Kungliga Ingenjörsvetenskapsakademien'' (IVA), founded on 24 October 1919 by King Gustaf V, is one of the royal academies in Sweden. The academy is an independent organisation, which prom ...

since 2003.Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences: Bäckström, Urban
accessed 2010-06-13

References

External links

Personal information at the Website of CSI

Financial Crises: The Swedish Experience (speech)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Backstrom, Urban 1954 births Living people Governors of Sveriges Riksbank Stockholm University alumni Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences 20th-century Swedish economists