Blog

• Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, currently Assistant Director, Payments, Currencies, and Infrastructure, at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has been appointed to head the BIS Innovation Hub.
• Mr Mancini-Griffoli will join the BIS on 1 March 2026 and lead work to explore technological solutions within the central bank community on innovation.
• He will drive stakeholder collaboration and support the overall delivery of the BIS mandate as a senior member of the BIS leadership team.

The Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has appointed Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli as Head of the BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH). He will lead the BIS Innovation Hub in its mission to foster international collaboration among central banks on innovative financial technology.

He is currently Assistant Director in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF, responsible for payments, currencies and financial market infrastructures. He will join the BIS on 1 March 2026 for a five-year term. As Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, he will be a member of the Executive Committee of the BIS.

The BIS Innovation Hub has a global footprint across seven centres around the world – in Frankfurt/Paris (for the Eurosystem), Hong Kong SAR, London, Singapore, Stockholm (for the Nordic countries), Switzerland and Toronto. The BIS Innovation Hub also has in place a strategic partnership with the Federal Reserve System.

Through its broad project portfolio, the BIS Innovation Hub works together with central bank partners to explore projects that have the potential to enhance the resilience and efficiency of the global financial system. It also monitors critical trends in technology affecting central banking, works closely to complement the research work of the BIS and serves as a focal point for a network of over 200 central bank experts on innovation.

Mr Mancini-Griffoli joined the IMF in 2011 and has held a number of leadership roles covering monetary policy and central banking operations as well as payments and financial market infrastructures. He is currently the Chair of the IMF coordination group on digital money and represents the IMF in international forums.

Prior to joining the IMF, Mr Mancini-Griffoli was a senior economist advising the board of the Swiss National Bank on monetary policy. He previously held roles at Goldman Sachs, the Boston Consulting Group and a technology startup in Silicon Valley.

He holds a PhD in economics from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, an MA in economics from the London School of Economics and a double BA in economics and international relations from Stanford University.

He succeeds Cecilia Skingsley, who was appointed County Governor of the County Administrative Board of Stockholm, Sweden in June. The Deputy General Manager of the BIS, Andréa M Maechler, is the Acting Head of the Innovation Hub until Mr Mancini-Griffoli joins the BIS in March 2026.

After Shein, Temu, and Alibaba, another major Chinese online retailer is making inroads into France: JD.com. The e-commerce heavyweight has set its sights on Fnac Darty, one of France’s best-known cultural and electronics retailers.

In late October, JD.com also launched its JoyBuy shopping platform in France and several other European markets, positioning itself to compete not only with other Chinese platforms but with Amazon, which still dominates online retail in the region.

JD.com, known in China as Jingdong, was founded in Beijing in 1998 by entrepreneur Liu Qiangdong, also called Richard Liu. It began as a small physical shop before expanding online.

Today, it is one of China’s biggest e-commerce companies, generating nearly $160 billion (€138.36bn) in sales in 2024 and ranking as the country’s third-largest online retailer, behind Alibaba and Temu owner PDD Holdings.

Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský, through his firm Vesa Equity Investment, is currently the largest shareholder in Fnac Darty with around 28.3% of the company.

His position gives him significant influence over what happens next and he is effectively the main counterweight to JD.com’s arrival. Křetínský can either increase his stake to keep the retailer under European control, or use the Chinese interest as an opportunity to sell part of his holding and cash out.

The second-largest shareholder is Ceconomy AG, the German group behind MediaMarkt and Saturn, which owns about 22% of the capital. The rest of the company is split among various investment funds, smaller shareholders, employees and the group itself, with the remainder traded on the stock market.

This summer, JD.com launched a takeover bid for Ceconomy. If successful, the €2.2 billion deal would give JD.com indirect control of Ceconomy’s stake in Fnac Darty, strengthening its foothold in the European retail sector. The acquisition is currently being finalised in Germany.

Fnac Darty, best known for its electronics, books and household appliances, operates mainly in France but also has stores in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and a number of African and Middle Eastern countries.

The French Ministry of the Economy — known as Bercy — closely monitors all foreign investments in French companies and projects involving Chinese firms are subject to even tighter scrutiny.

The government is not only assessing the financial implications of such deals, it is also examining possible risks to France’s cultural sovereignty and its ability to maintain control over how cultural content is created, distributed, and curated.

This heightened vigilance reflects a broader government strategy that increasingly treats cultural industries as strategic assets, on a par with energy, defence, and other sensitive technologies.

According to sources familiar with the discussions, JD.com’s leadership has met officials at the Ministry to offer reassurances, stressing that the company intends to comply fully with French regulations and does not plan to increase its stake further. Economy Minister Roland Lescure recently confirmed that talks are ongoing.

JD.com has formally requested that Bercy review the deal. Under French investment-screening rules, the Ministry now has between one and three months to issue a decision.

A major concern in JD.com’s case is the possibility that data belonging to Fnac Darty’s roughly two million customers could, in certain circumstances, be accessed by China.

The issue centres on China’s National Intelligence Law, introduced in 2017 and expanded several times since, which obliges Chinese organisations and citizens to assist the country’s intelligence services and hand over information deemed relevant to national security.

In practice, this means that a Chinese parent company such as JD.com could, at least in theory, be required to share data held by its subsidiaries or business partners abroad — a scenario that alarms French officials.

Related

Fnac Darty holds a significant amount of data on the cultural and technology habits of French and European consumers — information that could be highly valuable to any major digital player, and a source of concern for authorities focused on protecting France’s digital sovereignty.

The potential deal, which would make JD.com the second-largest shareholder in the retailer, raises a wider question that European governments are increasingly confronting: how far should China be allowed to expand its presence in the continent’s commercial and digital infrastructure — from warehouses and delivery networks to sensitive customer databases — without Europe losing control over sectors it considers strategic?