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As the ANZ’s chief ’number-cruncher’ for nearly 14 years, it’s been Saul Eslake’s job to look at vast reams of economic data, and make sense of it. He has a knack for explaining economics in terms mere mortals can understand, which is why he’s always in such high demand as a speaker and commentator.

Saul Eslake joined the Grattan Institute, a newly established ‘think tank’ affiliated with the University of Melbourne in August 2009. He also undertakes a range of speaking, writing and consulting engagements.

Prior to joining the Grattan Institute, Saul Eslake was for 14 years Chief Economist of the Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), one of Australia’s ‘big four’ commercial banks, and one with a sizeable presence in Asia. In that role he became one of Australia’s most widely recognized economic analysts and commentators.

Saul began his career as an economist at the Australian Treasury in Canberra. He subsequently held positions as Chief Economist at McIntosh Securities, a stock broker (now Merill Lynch Australia), and as Chief Economist (International) at National Mutual Funds Management (now Axa Australia).

Saul has a first class honours degree in Economics from the University of Tasmania, and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia. In 2003 he completed the Senior Executive Program at the Columbia Graduate School of Business in New York.

He is a Senior Fellow of the the Financial Services Institute of Australia, a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian representative on the International Conference of Commercial Bank Economists.

Saul Eslake has served a number of governments over the past 15 years. In 1992-93 he was Chief Executive of the Victorian Commission of Audit, which conducted a wide-ranging inquiry into the State of Victoria’s public finances for a then newly-elected State administration. He also served as a director of the Victorian Government-owned natural gas utility, Gascor, and a network of public hospitals in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs, in the mid-1990s. From 1995 until 2009 he was a member of the Tourism Forecasting Council, and from 1998 until the end of 2005 he was a non-executive director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

He was a member of the previous Australian Government’s Foreign Affairs Council and Trade Policy Advisory Council. He has been appointed by the current Australian Government to its National Housing Supply Council and was a member of its Long-Term Tourism Strategy Steering Committee. He was also one of 1000 Australians participated in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s ‘2020 Summit’ in April 2008.

In his home State of Tasmania Saul is a director of the University of Tasmania Foundation, a director of Hydro Tasmania (Tasmania’s electricity generating company) and Chairman of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board (which advises the State government on the distribution of financial assistance to artists, arts organizations and institutions).

He is also a member of the Advisory Panels for the Economics Schools of the University of Tasmania, Monash University and RMIT University.

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