William (Bill) Adams is vice president and senior economist for The PNC Financial Services Group.
In this role, he is responsible for PNC’s forecasts of international economic conditions and exchange rates, covering emerging Asia, the European Union, Canada and Latin America. Adams also contributes to analysis of the US national economy and regional economies within PNC’s core footprint. Adams serves as PNC’s spokesperson on international economic issues, and frequently presents to PNC clients on the economic outlook. He is widely quoted in the financial press and is a regular guest on Bloomberg, CNBC, and other broadcast programs.
Adams was promoted to vice president in February 2015, and in April 2018 was elected a member of the PNC Institutional Asset Management Investment Policy Committee. During his tenure in the PNC Economics Division, the team has been recognized as the most accurate forecasters of the US economy (Consensus Economics, 2017), the euro to US dollar exchange rate (Bloomberg, fourth quarter of 2016), and the Australian dollar to US dollar exchange rate (Bloomberg, first quarter of 2017).
Adams joined PNC in 2011 after serving as resident economist for The Conference Board China Center from 2009 to 2011. In that position he served as spokesman on the Chinese business cycle and was a designer of The Conference Board Leading Economic Index for China®, a widely-followed, market-moving economic indicator. Adams lived in China for five years and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
He is co-author with Damien Ma of In Line Behind a Billion People: How Scarcity Will Define China's Ascent in the Next Decade, published in 2013 by the Financial Times Press, and translated into Chinese in 2014 by Gusa Publishing (Taiwan). He is an associate of the University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Center, former co-director of the Pittsburgh Warburg Chapter of the American Council on Germany, and former President of the Economic Club of Pittsburgh, a local chapter of the National Association of Business Economics (NABE).
Adams holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard.