Robert Stheeman will retire from the UK Debt Management Office next year, after helping to raise more than £3 trillion ($3.7 billion) through bond markets in the last two decades.
Stheeman will depart at the end June, after a period of handover with his successor. The government announced this in a announcement on Thursday. The process of recruiting his successor will begin soon, with a start date in early 2024.
Stheeman stated that his tenure as DMO was “during an immense period of change in the UK, and fixed income markets worldwide.”
The period was marked by many turbulent periods: the global economic crisis, the eurozone debt meltdown and Brexit, as well as the pandemic of coronavirus, and the record-breaking gilt market explosion last year. Investors could rely on him as a constant, even though prime ministers and Bank of England Governors would come and go.
Moyeen Muhammad, a rates analyst at Barclays Plc, said: “I heard him described as the most important person that the average person has never heard of.” “He has been instrumental in making DMO one the most respected sovereign issuing agents.”
Over the last two decades, the UK net public debt has risen to around 100% of its Gross Domestic Product. This year, the UK’s bonds suffered from a drop in value as BOE raised interest rates aggressively.
UK Bonds lead global selloff as higher-for-longer bets sink in, Stheeman has been in charge of the DMO since its creation in 1998, when the responsibility for issuing government debt was taken away from the newly independent BOE. Stheeman worked for 16 years as the director of Deutsche Bank AG’s Debt Capital Markets Group. He was responsible for working with sovereign issuers.