Ben Bernanke takes fresh role in the world of high finance

Until very recently Ben Bernanke, academic and central banker, was not someone talked about for his role in America's corporate world.

But since stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve in February last year, Mr Bernanke, 61, has not just been worrying about the mercurial form of his beloved Washington Nationals baseball team.

He has dusted down his CV and taken two new advisory roles - at Citadel, the Chicago-based hedge fund, and, announced this week, Pimco, the California-based asset manager.

After leaving the Fed, Mr Bernanke, 61, quickly signed up with the Washington Speakers Bureau, which offers several categories of dinner entertainment, including "economists" like himself, alongside "astronauts", the "physically challenged" and "magicians".

In just one speech, Mr Bernanke can command more than his annual salary at the Fed of $200,000.

Pimco was a client. It heard from Mr Bernanke in October, shortly after the shock departure of its founder Bill Gross, and it invited him back again at the company's internal forecasting event in December.

By then, talks were already under way for a more formal role akin to that of Alan Greenspan, Mr Bernanke's predecessor at the Fed, who had a similar advisory berth at Pimco.

Mr Bernanke will not be rolling up his sleeves and barking trades into the phone. He will, however, offer thoughts on how to anticipate the next moves of the Fed, vital to the macroeconomic strategies at both Pimco and Citadel.

Pimco is often described as the world's largest bond manager. But the emergency actions taken by Mr Bernanke's Monetary Policy Committee during the financial crisis meant the Fed had a better claim to that title by buying up Treasury and mortgage bonds to accumulate $4tn in assets.

At Princeton University, Mr Bernanke became best-known for his work on the Great Depression - knowledge that was said to come in useful as he sought to avoid previous policy makers' mistakes in fixing a formidable credit crunch.

His salary for the advisory roles has not been disclosed, although people with knowledge of the companies estimate seven-figure deals for each.

Mr Bernanke follows his fellow crisis-fighting official Tim Geithner, the former US Treasury secretary who joined Warburg Pincus, in accepting a lucrative position in finance after leaving office.

"I'm not going to tell you that money doesn't matter, because you wouldn't believe me anyway," Mr Bernanke once told Princeton graduates. "If you are part of the lucky minority with the ability to choose, remember that money is a means, not an end."

Citadel and Pimco have accepted that they can both employ Mr Bernanke simultaneously, though he has agreed not to take any more consulting contracts. He can, however, continue to work at the Brookings Institution think-tank, give speeches and write.

His book The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath is due out in October and he has established a dedicated readership for his blogs, including an acerbic rebuttal to the Wall Street Journal's editorial page on Thursday. "It's generous of the WSJ writers to note, as they do, that 'economic forecasting isn't easy'. They should know, since the Journal has been forecasting a breakout in inflation and a collapse in the dollar at least since 2006," he wrote.

Mr Bernanke proved a lot in his navigation of the crisis, though he is yet to prove his worth for his new corporate bosses.

"Obviously it's a public relations effort," Mr Gross, now a portfolio manager at Janus Capital, told Bloomberg.

While Mr Bernanke does not pretend to be a substitute for the former Pimco boss, his hiring - PR move or substantive - might help the company move on after Mr Gross's raucous exit.

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