Claus Vistesen

Skip to content

NZN_4969

Claus Vistesen has been Chief Eurozone Economist at Pantheon for over 10 years and focuses on the Eurozone, with particular emphasis on the core economies of Germany and France, and on ECB policy.

He is keen to argue that the Eurozone still has a business cycle, despite its manifest structural problems, and that investors who focus only on the long-term fundamentals run the risk of missing significant investment opportunities. Claus also specializes in demographics, growth and the interaction between asset markets and monetary policy.

Claus holds Master’s degrees in Economics and Finance from the Copenhagen Business School and the University of Hull.

Recent key calls include:

Q3 2023 – Accurately predicted that official growth forecasts from the EU in the summer, for 2023 and 2024, would have to come down further. The EC’s forecasts came down significantly in the Winter forecasts.

September 2023 – Correctly called the ECB September hike—based on an accurate read of the Q2 numbers for productivity and wages—which was a tightly contested decision with the consensus almost evenly split.

February 2024 – Correctly predicted a downside surprise in the Swiss CPI for January.

2025 – Correctly called bund yields to rise above 2.5% and for the Bund-BTP spread to narrow.

2025 – Correctly called the Q4 rebound in EZ core and headline inflation, and subsequent hawkish tilt in the ECB’s December forecasts, killing the probability of a rate cut at that meeting, which many forecasters were expecting after the dovish September forecasts