Full Name
Francis Gross
Job Title
Board Member
Company
ACTUS Financial Research Foundation
Speaker Bio
Francis Gross currently serves on the Board of the ACTUS Financial Research Foundation.
Change marked Francis’ entire career. At Mercedes, VDO, and Rieter (1986-00) he contributed to the automotive industry’s globalisation and transformation, worldwide. As Head of Organisation at the European Central Bank (2001-06) he helped to shape the then start-up into an institution. Upon joining the ECB’s DG Statistics (2006-25) he realised instantly that the tech revolution would impose radical new specifications on statistics: controlled systemic stability would demand global, real-time measurement, to match the speed, shape and scale of tech-age crises, something reporting would never deliver. He then proposed a new strategy (“make the system itself measurable”), and a new paradigm (“the same data serves operations and measurement”), and designed a rigorous general model (“a network of contracts that connects a population of parties – a graph, each contract an algorithm that specifies who does what, for whom, when, and under what circumstances”), and the concept of a wider global infrastructure to operationalise it. A long shot, indeed, but he also conceived and delivered the first step.
From 2006, Francis designed the concept of and drove the campaign towards what was to become the G20-backed Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) System, launched in 2012.
At ACTUS he contributes to the development and promotion of a standardised algorithmic language representing nearly all financial contracts that generates their cash flows, another key element of the general model.
Research and conceptual design continue. The title: “digitalisation sustainable versus technology”.
Francis holds an engineering degree from École Centrale, Paris, and an MBA from Henley Management College, UK.
In his free time, Francis coaches athletes for javelin throwing, including a World and European champion in the decathlon.
Change marked Francis’ entire career. At Mercedes, VDO, and Rieter (1986-00) he contributed to the automotive industry’s globalisation and transformation, worldwide. As Head of Organisation at the European Central Bank (2001-06) he helped to shape the then start-up into an institution. Upon joining the ECB’s DG Statistics (2006-25) he realised instantly that the tech revolution would impose radical new specifications on statistics: controlled systemic stability would demand global, real-time measurement, to match the speed, shape and scale of tech-age crises, something reporting would never deliver. He then proposed a new strategy (“make the system itself measurable”), and a new paradigm (“the same data serves operations and measurement”), and designed a rigorous general model (“a network of contracts that connects a population of parties – a graph, each contract an algorithm that specifies who does what, for whom, when, and under what circumstances”), and the concept of a wider global infrastructure to operationalise it. A long shot, indeed, but he also conceived and delivered the first step.
From 2006, Francis designed the concept of and drove the campaign towards what was to become the G20-backed Global Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) System, launched in 2012.
At ACTUS he contributes to the development and promotion of a standardised algorithmic language representing nearly all financial contracts that generates their cash flows, another key element of the general model.
Research and conceptual design continue. The title: “digitalisation sustainable versus technology”.
Francis holds an engineering degree from École Centrale, Paris, and an MBA from Henley Management College, UK.
In his free time, Francis coaches athletes for javelin throwing, including a World and European champion in the decathlon.
Speaking At
