Today the Financial Times announced that Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, has been named the Financial Times Person of the Year. Trichet was selected by the FT’s judging panel, beating stiff competition from Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, Nicholas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin.

A wide variety of candidates were nominated for the title by staff at the Financial Times. A series of meetings of senior journalists then took place to debate the merits of the leading contenders. The final decision was made by the editor Lionel Barber.

Trichet was selected for his foresight in predicting and preparing for the credit squeeze, for standing up to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and for being unbending in his calls for structural economic reform in Europe. This was also the year of the dollar’s fall and Trichet played a crucial role in consolidating the position of the euro as a rival world currency.

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said: “Once we examined all the contenders, Trichet was the obvious choice. This was the year of the credit squeeze and the central banks were in the frontline. The European Central Bank acted early and decisively – and came of age as an institution. Trichet is one of the few people to emerge from the credit squeeze with his reputation enhanced.”

Ralph Atkins, Frankfurt correspondent, wrote: ”A central banker can never really doze in the sun. But in the usually sleepy month of August, Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, might have expected to relax longer in Saint-Malo, the rocky seaport on France’s Brittany coast, where he skippers motor and sailing boats. Instead, the former French bureaucrat was, metaphorically, at the bow when the waves of this year’s global credit squeeze came crashing down on the world’s economies. It was the first financial market crisis fought by BlackBerry from the beach.”

The tradition of selecting an FT Person of the Year goes back “beyond the start of the electronic database”, said Brian Groom, comment and analysis editor. Most recently Lakshmi Mittal was named Man of the Year in 2006 and in 2005 Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google shared the honour as ‘Men of the Year’.

Further information can be found online at: www.ft.com

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For further information, please contact:

Jo Crosby, Financial Times, 020 7873 3811 or jo.crosby@ft.com

Notes to Editors:

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