Florian Heider is Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE and Professor of Finance at Goethe University’s House of Finance. His research interests are currently focussed on financial intermediaries and on their role in monetary policy, market design, and the capital structure of companies. His work has appeared in a range of international academic journals, including worldwide leading publications in economic and financial research such as The Review of Economic Studies, The Journal of Finance, and The Journal of Financial Economics. He studied Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) at the University of Oxford before going on to obtain a Ph.D. in Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). Following research positions at the London School of Economics and the New York University Stern School of Business, in 2004 he went to the ECB, working in various functions in the departments Research, Market Infrastructure & Payments, and Monetary Policy.