Laurence Boone


Laurence Boone is a French economist whose fields of interest include macroeconomics, European politics and public finance. She was an economic advisor to the President of the French Republic between July 2014 and March 2016 under François Hollande's presidency.

Early life and education

Boone was born in 1969 in a family with distant Irish origins. Her father was an engineer. She attended the school institutions of Notre-Dame-de-Sion, La Bruyère-Sainte-Cécile and École du Sacré-Cœur.
Boone earned an MAS in modelization and quantitative analysis from Paris X-Nanterre University, a PhD in economics from London Business School, and a master degree in econometrics from the University of Reading.

Career

Early beginnings

Boone started her career as an analyst at Merrill Lynch Asset Management. She was a researcher at the Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales from 1996 to 1998, then an economist at the department of Economic Affairs of the OECD from 1998 to 2004. In 2004, she joined Barclays Capital France as a chief economist.
In 2011, Boone became the Europe chief economist at Bank of America-Merill Lynch. A member of the Cercle des économistes, Boone authored numerous books and publications. She taught at Sciences Po Paris, École polytechnique, ENSAE and ENS Cachan. She was also a member of the jury of the École nationale d'administration competitive exam.
Boone became a member of the board of directors of the Kering group in 2010. After her term was renewed for a three-year period on May 6, 2014, she resigned from the board of directors on June 12, 2014. In 2014, she started editing chronicles for the L'Opinion daily.

Career in politics

In July 2014, Boone was appointed a financial and economic advisor to the Élysée Palace. The announce of her nomination to President François Hollande was made in early June 2014 as an anticipation of Emmanuel Macron's resignation. L'Opinion then highlighted one of her recent chronicles in which she criticized "disastrous economic results" and the government's "almost nonexistent choices of economic policy". The announcement of her nomination also aroused harsh comments, like the one of Slate's : "the world of finance that governs without ever having been elected" —which is a reference to François Hollande's January 22, 2012 speech in Le Bourget. Minister of Finance and the Public Accounts Michel Sapin addressed the critics by saying: "Competences are back." The coincidence of the nomination and David Azéma being hired by Bank of America in July 2014 aroused comments about a "shameless criss-crossing between Bank of America and the socialist power".
On December 26, 2014, Boone's position was renamed "special advisor for multilateral and European economic and financial affairs", sherpa of François Hollande, as a part of a series of decisions made to "simplify" his cabinet. During the Greek government-debt crisis, she helped to convince him to keep Greece in the Eurozone.
Boone took part in the 2015 Bilderberg Conference.

Later career

Boone's resignation on March 14, 2016 to join AXA as a chief economist was announced in January of the same year.
On June 5, 2018, Boone was appointed as chief economist of the OECD as a replacement to Catherine L. Mann. She took office on July 24, 2018.

Other activities

Boone is married to Polytechnician Xavier Faure, and mother of two children.