The former Governor of the Bank of England in conversation with Walter B. Kielholz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Swiss Reinsurance Company, and Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank.
Monday, 31. May 2021, 19:00 – 20:00 h
Live from the Studio
The former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, Lord King of Lothbury, in conversation with Walter B. Kielholz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Swiss Re, and Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank on the topic "Uncertainty, upheaval, hope - On the analysis of the current economic and political situation".
Mervyn King served as Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to June 2013. He was knighted (GBE) in 2011, made a life peer in 2013, and appointed by The Queen to be a Knight of the Garter in 2014.
Lord King is the Alan Greenspan Professor of Economics and Professor of Law at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics.
In 2016 he published The End of Alchemy. With a new preface, it appeared in paperback in 2017, and has been translated into many languages. His new book (with John Kay) Radical Uncertainty was published in March 2020.
Born in 1948, Mervyn King studied at King’s College, Cambridge, and taught at Cambridge and Birmingham Universities before spells as Visiting Professor at both Harvard University and MIT. From October 1984 he was Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he founded the Financial Markets Group. He is Chair of the Philharmonia Orchestra and a member of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee.
Walter B. Kielholz was elected to the Board of Directors of Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd in 1998 and to the Board of Directors of Swiss Re Ltd in connection with its formation in 2011. He was Vice Chairman from 2003 to April 2009 and has been Chairman of the Board of Directors since May 2009. He chairs the Chairman’s and Governance Committee.
Walter B. Kielholz began his career at the General Reinsurance Corporation, Zurich, in 1976, where he held several positions in the US, in the UK and Italy before assuming responsibility for the company’s European marketing. In 1986, he joined Credit Suisse, where he was responsible for relationships with large insurance groups. He joined Swiss Re in 1989, where he became an Executive Board member in 1993 and was Chief Executive Officer from 1997 to 2002. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of Credit Suisse Group Ltd from 1999 to 2014 and served as Chairman from 2003 to 2009.
Thomas Jordan was Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from 2012 to 2024. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of Bern in 1993. After a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University, he joined the SNB in 1997 as an economic advisor and shortly afterwards took over as Head of the Research Unit. In 2004, Thomas Jordan became an Alternate Member of the Governing Board. The Federal Council appointed him Member of the Governing Board in 2007 and Vice-Chairman in 2010. He chaired the Board of Directors of the SNB's UBS Stabilization Fund (StabFund) from its establishment in 2008 until its dissolution in 2013.
Thomas Jordan was Governor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Switzerland and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). He represented Switzerland in the Plenary and the Steering Committee of the Financial Stability Board (FSB).
The University of Bern appointed Thomas Jordan as a lecturer in 1998 and as an honorary professor in 2003. The University of Basel awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2017.