Mário Centeno

Mário Centeno is a Portuguese economist and policymaker who gained international prominence as President of the Eurogroup from 2018 to 2020—the governing body where eurozone finance ministers make critical decisions on monetary and fiscal coordination. A Harvard-trained PhD economist, Centeno built a distinguished career across academia and top-tier economic policy roles in Europe. His keynotes tackle finance through a geopolitical lens, diving into fiscal policy, eurozone governance architecture, and financial stability. He speaks to C-suite executives, institutional investors, public bodies, and multinational corporations navigating volatile macroeconomic terrain.

Centeno holds degrees from the Technical University of Lisbon’s ISEG—a BA in Economics and an MSc in Applied Mathematics—and earned his PhD in Economics from Harvard in 2000. He spent his early career at the Bank of Portugal as a research economist, eventually rising to Deputy Head of Economic Studies (2004-2013) and serving simultaneously on the EU’s Economic Policy Committee. From 2007 to 2013, he chaired Portugal’s Macroeconomic Statistics Working Group. He’s a full professor of economics at ISEG.

In November 2015, Prime Minister António Costa tapped him as Finance Minister—a role he held through June 2020. That same tenure included his election as Eurogroup President in December 2017, taking office in January 2018 and serving until July 2020. While leading the Eurogroup, he also chaired the European Stability Mechanism’s Board of Governors and observed on the ECB’s Governing Council. His signature moment came in April 2020, when he engineered the Eurogroup’s €540 billion emergency firewall to combat the COVID-19 crisis. In July 2020, he became Governor of the Bank of Portugal, a post he held until October 2025.