ECB Board Member Resigns Amid Stimulus Tensions

The European Central Bank said Wednesday that Sabine Lautenschlaeger would resign from its executive board at the end of October, amid tensions over its president Mario Draghi's extraordinary stimulus measures.

Lautenschlaeger, who is German, told Draghi that she would "resign from her position on 31 October 2019, prior to the end of her term of office", the ECB said in a statement.

She has served on the board and the central bank's governing council since January 2014, and until February as vice chair of the supervisory board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, which performs oversight of more than 100 "significant" banks in the single currency area.

Draghi "thanked her for her instrumental role in helping set up and steer Europe-wide banking supervision, a key pillar of banking union, as well as her unwavering commitment to Europe", the bank added.

It gave no reason for her departure.

But the surprise move comes amid serious divisions within the bank's leadership over Draghi's decision this month to unleash a huge stimulus package aimed at propping up the flagging eurozone economy.

ECB governors pushed the deposit interest rate further into negative territory and relaunched net purchases of government and corporate debt.

A deep split among the central bankers burst into the open a day after the monetary policy meeting.

Around 10 of the 25 members of the ECB governors were against relaunching the quantitative easing programme of purchasing 20 billion euros ($22 billion) worth of debt monthly from November, sources told AFP.

German central bank president Jens Weidmann, in a rare public broadside, accused Draghi of "overshooting the mark", adding that "such a far-reaching package was not necessary".

Ahead of the meeting, several eurozone central bankers, including Weidmann, had openly warned against unleashing a new round of stimulus so swiftly.