Alfonso Prat-Gay (born 24 November 1965) is an Argentine economist and politician. Following the election of Mauricio Macri to the presidency on 2015, he became Minister of Economy. He was also President of the Central Bank of Argentina from December 2002 to September 2004, and was elected National Deputy for the Civic Coalition in the 2009 elections. A decade later, as Minister of Economy in the Macri administration, he lifted 4-year-old capital controls on the Argentine currency, a mere 6 days after taking office. His work earned him Euromoney's Central Bank Governor of the Year award. Prat-Gay is also a member of Washington D.C. based think tank, The Inter-American Dialogue. He is considered an orthodox liberal who has a good image in the markets and fluent contacts abroad. However, Prat-Gay has been a political ally to leftist Victoria Donda and some economists like Javier Milei consider him to be a socialist or a socialdemocrat. Career Prat-Gay was born in Buenos Aires in 1965, the son of Jorge Prat-Gay. He earned a degree in economics from the Universidad Católica Argentina in 1989, and obtained his master's degree in 1994 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a PhD candidate. Finances In 1994, Prat-Gay joined JP Morgan in New York City and went on to work for the bank in its Buenos Aires and London branches until 2001. He co-founded APL Economía, an economic consulting firm. Prat-Gay is Chairman of Tilton Capital, an asset management company he co-founded in 2005 with Pedro Lacoste. He is president of Fundación Andares para el desarrollo de las Microfinanzas ("Andares Foundation for the Development of Microfinances"). His clients at Tilton Capital included the late María Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, former chairperson of Argentina's largest concrete manufacturer, Loma Negra. Prat-Gay's work for Mrs. Fortabat came under scrutiny after revelations that Tilton Capital facilitated tax evasion and capital flight for Fortabat and other clients, including the entirety of Mrs. Fortabat's billion-dollar payout for her sale of Loma Negra in 2005. The vice president of JP Morgan Argentina at the time, Hernán Arbizu, declared that Prat-Gay managed much of this wealth in an offshore hedge fund of his creation with put options against the Argentine peso. He was appointed executor of the Lacroze de Fortabat estate following Mrs. Fortabat's death in 2012. Politics In December 2002, Prat-Gay was named President of the Central Bank of Argentina, at only