Italy's Panetta to chair central bank group BIS' Board of Directors

By Marc Jones

May 12 (Reuters) - Italy's central bank chief Fabio Panetta is to take over as chair of the Bank for International Settlements' Board of Directors, the central bank umbrella group said on Tuesday.

Panetta, who will serve a three-year term starting on June 3, is replacing France's central bank governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau, who announced in February he was stepping down from his Bank of France role a year early.

The Board of Directors that Panetta will now oversee is responsible for determining the "strategic and policy direction" of the Switzerland-based BIS, which advises central banks around the world and is itself finalising a new strategy review.

It is also in charge of "supervising" the BIS' management and fulfilling specific tasks in its 'Statutes', something that has been thrust into the spotlight this year after criticism from U.S. Federal Reserve's top banking supervisor, Michelle Bowman, about the governance of the BIS-hosted Basel Committee.

The BIS, which has been vocal on the need to maintain central bank independence and issued repeated warnings about the risks of stablecoins in recent years, also made a number of other key appointments on Tuesday.

-- Gabriel Gal?polo, Governor of the Central Bank of Brazil, is to take over from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Eddie Yue as Chair of the meeting of Governors of major emerging market economies for a two-year term from September 1.

-- Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda is replacing former Korean central bank head Chang Yong Rhee as Chair of the Committee on the Global Financial System for a three-year term, starting immediately.

-- Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Michele Bullock, will also take over immediately for a two-year term as Chair of the Asian Consultative Council from Vietnam's former central bank Governor Nguyen Thi Hong.

-- The Board of Directors that Panetta will oversee can have up to 18 members. Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States all have permanent positions.

-- Villeroy de Galhau's decision to step down as Bank of France chief a year early has allowed French President Emmanuel Macron to nominate his own former chief of staff, Emmanuel Moulin, as replacement ahead of the country's 2027 election that the far-right could win. (Reporting by Marc Jones in London and Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru, Editing by Louise Heavens and Keith Weir)