Federal Council elects Thomas Bauer as future Chair of FINMA Board of Directors and three new members to the board
Bern, 01.07.2015 - At its meeting today, the Federal Council elected Thomas Bauer as the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). Having been a partner in Ernst & Young law services until 2014, Thomas Bauer will join the board of directors on 1 August 2015 and will take over from Anne Héritier Lachat on 1 January 2016. In addition, the Federal Council elected three new members to the FINMA Board of Directors as of 1 January 2016: Renate Schwob, former Deputy CEO of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), Marlene Amstad, Regional Advisor at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Hong Kong, and Bernard Keller, who was a member of the Executive Board of Julius Baer Group Ltd up until the end of 2014.
The Federal Council took note of the resignation of Anne Héritier Lachat upon expiry of the term of office at the end of 2015, who has been Chair of the FINMA Board of Directors since 2011, and of Vice-Chair Paul Müller and thanked them warmly for their services. It elected sixty-year old Thomas Bauer, who lives in Therwil in the Canton of Basel Landschaft, as the new Chair of the FINMA Board of Directors. The new Vice-Chair will be determined by the Federal Council at a later date. In addition, the Federal Council has confirmed the re-appointment of Philippe Egger, Bruno Frick, Yvan Lengwiler, Günter Pleines und Franz Wipfli for the 2016-2019 term of office.
Thomas Bauer - new Chair of the Board of Directors
Thomas Baer completed his law studies with a doctorate in stock exchange law. After three years as an attorney-at-law, he first worked in the tax service of the former Union Bank of Switzerland and subsequently as a legal consultant at the former Bank für Gemeinwirtschaft (Schweiz) AG. During this period, Thomas Bauer also worked for the Legal Affairs Committee of the Association of Foreign Banks in Switzerland and for the Swiss Bankers Association. In 1994, he was appointed as Deputy Director of the Legal and Tax Department of ATAG Ernst & Young. From 1998 to his departure in 2014, he was also appointed partner and head of the specialist area of insolvency and restructuring law at E&Y. Currently, Thomas Bauer is still employed part-time at the Basel Landschaft cantonal court.
The Federal Council elected Thomas Bauer on account of his track record and his proven banking law expertise, namely in the area of due diligence obligations and combating money laundering, in company law and in insolvency and restructuring law. It emerged from the multi-stage selection process that Thomas Bauer best met the qualification profile for the Chair of the FINMA Board of Directors.
Two women, one man from Ticino
Due to the resignation of Vice-Chair Paul Müller at the end of 2015 and of Jean-Baptiste Zufferey und Joseph Rickenbacher, who have already stood down, the Federal Council also elected three new members to the FINMA Board of Directors, namely Renate Schwob, who lives in Baar (Canton of Zug), Marlene Amstad, who lives in Hong Kong and Zurich, and Bernard Keller, who lives in Cadro (Canton of Ticino). They will take up office at the start of the new 2016-2019 term on 1 January 2016.
-Renate Schwob is 62 and, after completing her law degree, she was admitted to the bar and practised as a lawyer and notary public before later also obtaining a doctorate. After working for many years in public administration, she joined Credit Suisse where she was head of the Legal and Compliance Unit for the Trading and Sales business area. From 2004 to 2014, Renate Schwob was the Deputy CEO of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) and Head of the Swiss Financial Market. Renate Schwob was elected to the FINMA Board of Directors on account of her in-depth knowledge of all important topics which concern the financial centre, particularly of compliance and legal issues and matters to do with implementing regulatory requirements.
-Marlene Amstad is 47. After obtaining her doctorate in economics, she began her career at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. She subsequently worked for Credit Suisse in quantitative credit risk management, in the research section of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Later she returned to the SNB as the Deputy Director where she took over management of investment strategy and financial market analysis and was a member of the investment committee for foreign exchange reserves. At the end of 2011, Marlene Amstad joined the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Hong Kong, where she was responsible for the Asian Bond Fund Initiative up to mid-2015. Since 2007, she has also been a lecturer at Bern University in the area of financial markets and infrastructure. Marlene Amstad was elected on account of her proven knowledge of the Swiss financial market, her international experience in asset management and her global contacts in central banks and regulatory bodies.
-Bernard Keller is 62 and studied economics at the University of St. Gallen. He began his career at Nestlé before he joined UBS, where he became head of the Private Banking Advisory Unit in Lugano in 1990. In 1993, he became Deputy General Manager and Head of Private Banking at the BDL Banco di Lugano, a private bank under the ownership of UBS, and was appointed its CEO in 1997. After the sale of BDL to Julius Baer, he became CEO of the renamed Banca Julius Baer & Co. SA (Lugano) and a member of the Executive Board of Julius Baer. With Bernard Keller, who retired at the end of 2014, a highly-regarded expert on Ticino's financial centre has been elected to the FINMA Board of Directors. He possesses outstanding practical experience in the banking sector and extensive knowledge of the asset management business.
The three new members of the board of directors are independent of the supervised entities and will no longer perform any duties which could lead to conflicts of interest when they take up office.
Address for enquiries
Roland Meier, Media Spokesperson FDF
Tel. +41 58 462 60 86, roland.meier@gs-efd.admin.ch
Publisher
The Federal Council
https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start.html
Federal Department of Finance
https://www.efd.admin.ch/efd/en/home.html
