Vanoli was born in Buenos Aires in 1961. He grew up in the Palermo district of the city and attended high school at Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. He later enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires and earned a degree in Economics in 1987, after which he spent a year as a teaching assistant in the Economic Development Department of the School of Economics under Professor Pedro Paz. Vanoli and his wife are separated; the couple has three children.
His work experience in the public sector began in July 1988 as Assistant Division Chief in the External Debt Management Office of the Central Bank, where he also served as a senior analyst. He joined the National Public Credit Office of the Ministry of Economy in 1992 and remained there until 2000. Vanoli began a long career at the National Securities Commission (CNV) in 2000 as a senior adviser to the head of the agency at the time, Carlos Weitz. He returned to the Central Bank in 2002 as an adviser to Board of Governors member Arturo O’Connell, and in October 2006, when Eduardo Hecker was appointed president of the CNV, Vanoli was named vice president. Hecker eventually resigned in November 2009 due to differences with the powerful Secretary of Commerce at the time, Guillermo Moreno, and Vanoli thus became President of the CNV.
Vanoli’s tenure at the National Securities Commission was marked by sustained growth in the prices of the Buenos Aires Stock Exchange, as well as numerous regulatory reforms. The most significant of these was the 2012 Capital Markets Reform Law, which sought to strengthen the CNV’s oversight role over rating agencies, IPOs, and mutualization (previously left to private sector operators). Computer systems among the country’s various stock and commodity exchanges were integrated during Vanoli’s term, and monitoring efforts were shared with publicly funded universities, with results made freely available to investors. Information exchange between the CNV, the Ministry of Economy, the Central Bank, the AFIP tax agency, and the Superintendent of Insurance was also mandated as a deterrent against money laundering and other illicit financial activities. Following these reforms, the Financial Action Task Force removed Argentina from its “grey list” in October 2014, noting significant progress in these areas.
President of the Central Bank of Argentina
Alejandro Vanoli was appointed president of the Central Bank on October 1, 2014, replacing Juan Carlos Fábrega. Vanoli was the only president of the Central Bank of Argentina who had previously been a staff member of the institution, beginning in 1988.
During Vanoli’s administration, the inflation rate fell by 12 percentage points in the context of a recovery in GDP growth, which reached 2.4% annually in 2015, following increased inflation and recession in early 2014 before Vanoli’s arrival at the Central Bank. Under his leadership, the dollar fell sharply in the illegal market, and the U.S. dollar was offset by both incentives to save in local currency and stricter oversight of the foreign exchange market.
Although Alejandro Vanoli held a Senate-approved mandate through December 2019, he resigned on December 9, 2015, at the end of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency.