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(Bloomberg) — German Finance Minister Joerg Kukies played down concerns in financial markets about French political turbulence, saying investors appeared to be reacting in a “constructive” and “orderly” manner to the removal of the government.
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“I’m obviously in very regular dialog and contact with my French colleague,” Kukies said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Berlin.
“And the response of markets to the vote in the French parliament was very constructive,” he added, referring to what he said was a successful auction of French government debt. “So the markets seem to be taking this in stride and constructively.”
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to stay in office until his five-year term ends in 2027 even after Marine Le Pen’s far-right party allied with leftist lawmakers to topple his government on Wednesday.
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In a televised address Thursday evening in Paris, Macron said he will appoint a new prime minister in coming days tasked with forming an administration representing all political forces and ending the crisis triggered when he called a snap parliamentary vote in June.
Kukies, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, was appointed last month after Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz sacked Christian Lindner, the leader of the Free Democrats who was in charge of the finance portfolio.
Scholz’s surprise move, prompted by a dispute over government borrowing, ended his three-party ruling alliance with the FDP and Greens and left him without a majority in the lower house of parliament.
He’s continuing in office at the head of a minority administration with the Greens until a snap election on Feb. 23.
Kukies, 56, attended university in his native Mainz before studying at Paris, Harvard and Chicago.
A former leader of his regional chapter of the Social Democrats, he worked for Goldman in London and Frankfurt from 2001 until 2018, when he was hired by Scholz as one of his deputies in the finance ministry.
He later became Scholz’s chief economic adviser in the chancellery before his promotion to replace Lindner last month.
–With assistance from Michael Nienaber.
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