He was born in New York on 13 June 1957 and graduated in Economics and Business at the Università degli Studi di Roma in 1980. He continued his studies at the University of Chicago and achieved a Master's degree in Economics in 1981.
He joined the Bank of Italy in 1983 and was sent to the Economic Research Centre at the Turin branch. He was seconded to the International Monetary Fund (1984-1986) for two years and on returning to Rome, he spent two years with the International Sector of the Research Department.
From 1988, he worked in the Central Bank and Markets Department and held various positions, first in the Monetary and Financial Markets Directorate and then in the Monetary Policy and Foreign Exchange Directorate (1999-2008), where he was responsible for implementing monetary policy operations and was a member of European Central Bank working groups for managing ECB monetary policy.
In 2008, he was appointed Deputy Head of the Central Bank Operations Directorate, and became its Head on 1 March 2012. He then became Head of the Market Operations Directorate in January 2014. He was a member of the ECB's Market Operations Committee during this period, which drew up proposals for new monetary policy measures to mitigate the effects of the financial crisis.
From 1 January 2017 to 29 March 2020, he was Deputy Head of the Markets and Payment Systems Directorate General, and as such he represented the Bank in the '4CB' group, which comprises the Central Banks of Italy, Germany, France and Spain and manages the infrastructures of and provides payment systems for the Eurosystem.
On 30 March 2020, he became Deputy Head of the Currency Circulation and Retail Payments Directorate General, and he has been Head of this Directorate General since 1 July 2022.
