Chairman of the Board of Directors of Baloise Andreas Burckhardt hands over chairmanship Montag, 07. Dezember 2020 - 07:00

Media information

Basel, 7 December 2020. After ten successful years as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bâloise Holding Ltd, Dr Andreas Burckhardt has decided to step down from his post and not to stand for re-election at the next Annual General Meeting on 30 April 2021. The Board of Directors has nominated Dr Thomas von Planta, a member of the Board of Directors since 2017, as successor for the chairmanship. Together with the Board of Directors and the Corporate Executive Committee, he will continue to lead Baloise on its current path of success.

“This is the right time for younger, capable hands to take over the chairmanship of Baloise. The company is in a very good place and with the recent launch of its second season of the ‘Simply Safe’ strategy, it is perfectly positioned to achieve continued success. I also had the honour of supporting and ultimately inaugurating Baloise Park – a project that has been very close to my heart, because it is an investment in Basel and symbolises the beginning of a new era,” says Andreas Burckhardt.

In 1988, he joined the Baloise Group as Secretary General and performed this role for six years. Alongside his political career as a member of the Grand Council (cantonal parliament) and as a director of the Basel Chamber of Commerce, he took up a position on the Board of Directors of Bâloise Holding Ltd in 1999 and became Chairman of the Board in 2011. Under the chairmanship of Andreas Burckhardt, Baloise prospered and enabled its shareholders to participate in its success. The Baloise share price has performed very well over the past ten years, dividends increased by more than 40 per cent and around CHF 600.0 million was returned to shareholders through share buy-backs. Over the past decade, several strategic programmes and significant acquisitions have helped Baloise to become a technology-driven financial services company with a focus on four profitable core markets and to become a key player within the Home and Mobility ecosystems. The company has also worked its way into the top 8 per cent of the most popular employers in Europe’s financial industry and has made an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction the guiding principle behind its service offering.

“Over the past ten years, Andreas Burckhardt and the Board of Directors have led Baloise with sound and prudent judgement. In his approach to work, he embodies the way in which business is intrinsically connected with politics and with the society in which it operates, and his actions are inspired by the humanist heritage of the city of Basel. This is why it has always been very important to him to foster our corporate culture and encourage dialogue with the employees in all our markets,” says Vice-Chairman Andreas Beerli, paying tribute to Andreas Burckhardt’s style of leadership.

Dr Thomas von Planta, who has been nominated for the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bâloise Holding Ltd by his fellow board members, has a profound expertise in the financial market. The 59-year-old Swiss national has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2017 and has contributed to the Chairman’s Committee, the Investment Committee and the Audit and Risk Committee over the course of the last three and a half years or so. Following his election as Chairman of the Board of Directors, Thomas von Planta will step down from his role as managing director of CorFinAd AG, a company specialising in consultancy for M&A transactions and capital market finance. Since 2019, he has sat on the Board of Directors of BB Biotech AG and the Advisory Board of Harald Quandt Industriebeteiligungen. Until March 2019, he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the exchange-listed Bellevue Group AG, Bank am Bellevue AG and Bellevue Asset Management AG. Before that, he had worked for Goldman Sachs in Zurich, Frankfurt and London for around ten years and had been the interim Head of Investment Banking and Head of Corporate Finance for the Vontobel Group in Zurich between 2002 and 2006.

On the subject of his nomination, Thomas von Planta says: “It is a great honour and pleasure to be nominated for the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bâloise Holding Ltd. Baloise is a successful insurance group that is strongly positioned in its four core markets and has a unique corporate culture. Continuing to foster this culture and making every effort to ensure that Baloise remains a sustainable and responsible company for all of its stakeholders is of great importance to me.”

Further information

• CV and profile of Thomas von Planta
• Media information at www.baloise.com

Contact

Baloise Group, Aeschengraben 21, 4002 Basel, Switzerland

Website: www.baloise.com

Email: media.relations@baloise.com / investor.relations@baloise.com

Media Relations: Tel: +41 (0)58 285 8214

Investor Relations: Tel: +41 (0)58 285 8181