Dejan Soskic nominated as new Serbian cbank chief

The Serbian government has nominated Dejan Soskic, a central bank insider with a strong academic background in economics, to be the new central bank governor, Serbia's prime minister said on Monday. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference, Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said the government would submit the nomination of Soskic, head of the Serbian central bank's supervisory board, for parliamentary approval. "Soskic is the official candidate of the ruling coalition for the position of central bank governor," Cvetkovic said. "He fulfilled all basic criteria about non-party affiliation and professionalism." Soskic, 43, also teaches at the faculty of economics at the University of Belgrade. He graduated from the department in 1989, two years before the collapse of communist Yugoslavia, and obtained a doctorate in 1999 on the theme of US portfolio management and mutual funds. He has served as a special adviser to the central bank governor and as an economic policy adviser to a European Union advisory body for economic and legal issues. Soskic is the author of "Securities: Portfolio Management and Mutual Funds."