10/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - Lorenzo Bini Smaghi leaves the ECB. Under pressure for months to leave his job at the European Central Bank's Executive Board to make way for someone of French nationality, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi of Italy announced on Thursday 10 November that he would be standing down at the end of the year and would start lecturing at Harvard University in the United States on 1 January 2012. In April 2011, France and Italy reached an agreement whereby the French backed Italian national Mario Draghi to become the new head of the ECB in exchange for Italy's promise that France would soon be given a seat on the ECB's Executive Board. After the eurozone summit in Brussels on 27 October, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that there were two Italians on the ECB Executive Board, which was wonderful for Italy but it could not continue because there weren't any French people. (OL/transl.fl)