Köng appointed head of PostFinance
Hansruedi Köng has been appointed the new head of PostFinance, Swiss Post’s banking arm. The 45-year-old economist will replace the current head of PostFinance Jürg Bucher on 1 January 2012 and will also be a member of executive management team.
Bucher, who has also been CEO of Swiss Post since December 2009, is likely to step down in the summer 2012, when he reaches the statutory retirement age, the company said, adding that “the Board of Directors of Swiss Post will appoint a successor to the post of CEO in good time.”
Köng has been head of treasury since 2003 and also head of finance at PostFinance since 2007. He studied economics at the University of Berne and completed the advanced programme in financial management at the Swiss Finance Institute.
He was responsible for the merger of the Treasury and Finance departments and for building up a professional asset and liability management system at PostFinance. He is currently in charge of implementing the strategy for the investment of customer deposits defined by the Swiss Post Board of Directors.
“Thanks to this experience and his position as a member of the Board of PostFinance, he has excellent knowledge of operations and management of the financial arm of Swiss Post. He is very familiar with the current strategic development of the financial unit and will continue to advance the development of one of the main players in the Swiss retail financial market,” a statement said.
Before joining Swiss Post, Köng worked at Schweizerische Volksbank, the Basler Kantonalbank and PricewaterhouseCoopers in a number of positions in financial management. He was then deputy manager of the BV-Group Bern for two years, a company that specialises in start-ups and the provision of equity capital.
With 2.45m private customers, around 331,000 business customers and customer deposits under management of CHF 89bn, PostFinance is the “number one in the Swiss payments business and one of the main players in the financial sector,” it said.
PostFinance employs 3,300 people and generated a profit of CHF 575m in 2010. Under the new postal legislation, PostFinance will soon be transformed into a public company under private law and will be owned by Swiss Post.
