Manuel Ammann elected as new President of HSG from 1 February 2024

The selection committee appointed by the University Council unanimously proposed Prof. Dr. Manuel Ammann for election as President. At its meeting on 19 December 2022, the Senate of the University of St.Gallen (HSG) adopted the proposal and asked the University Council to elect Manuel Ammann. Then, on 20 December 2022, the University Council elected Manuel Ammann as the new President of HSG, and the St.Gallen government approved the election on the same day. 
“I am very much looking forward to contributing to the successful further development of HSG as President. After all, HSG, with its many highly competent colleagues and excellent students, should continue to be a place of outstanding research and teaching in the future, a unique place of thought that radiates from Eastern Switzerland to the whole world,” says Manuel Ammann. We warmly congratulate him on his election and wish him every success in his new position, which he will take up on 1 February 2024.

A convincing personality for leadership

“Manuel Ammann convinced us with a professional presentation of his vision for the future of HSG, his broad wealth of experience and his cooperative yet assertive leadership personality. We agreed that he meets all the requirements to the highest degree, and he will set new impulses for the further development of HSG,” said Prof. Dr. Oliver Gassmann, who chaired the selection committee. Manuel Ammann has gained a great deal of professional and management experience at universities and in the private sector over the past 20 years. As the director of a large institute, he brings with him a deep understanding of the position and importance of the institutes at HSG and is very familiar with HSG’s self-image, identity and work processes. Thanks to his many years as a member of the Board of Directors at St.Galler Kantonalbank AG (a position he will resign from as President of the HSG at the Annual General Meeting 2024), he is well networked in Eastern Switzerland. At the same time, he also has extensive international experience thanks to his studies and guest professorships abroad as well as international research collaborations. The selection committee describes Manuel Ammann as an independent, authentic, credible and resilient personality and a person of integrity. These qualities also make him the ideal person to take the lead in the changes to governance and compliance that the new university law will bring. 

Public vacancy posting

For the first time, external candidates were able to apply for the position in addition to full and associate professors of HSG. The election process was very swift, with the University Council appointing a selection committee by resolution on 2 May 2022, which then met for the first time on 23 May 2022. The requirements profile was approved by the University Council in June, and on this basis the job advertisement was formulated and then widely published in German and English in national and international media. One woman and two men made it into the final selection. It is customary at HSG to elect a new President already one year before that person takes office. Meanwhile, the four Vice Presidents will be elected in the course of the spring semester of 2023. 

About Manuel Ammann

Prof. Dr. Manuel Ammann (born 1970) obtained an Intermediate Diploma in Economic Sciences from the University of Zurich in 1991 and a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in Canada in 1993. This was followed by a Ph.D. at the University of St.Gallen, where he received his doctorate (Dr. oec. in Finance, summa cum laude) in 1998 with a doctoral thesis on “Pricing Derivative Credit Risk”. In 2002 he qualified as a professor at the University of Basel with the monographic habilitation “Analyzing convertible bonds”. In 2002 he was elected Professor and the following year Full Professor of Finance at the University of St.Gallen. He has also been a visiting professor at several foreign universities, including the University of California at Berkeley and New York University.

Manuel Ammann is the founder and, since 2004, the academic programme director of the Master’s programme in Banking and Finance (MBF-HSG) and has been director of the Swiss Institute of Banking and Finance (s/bf-HSG) since 2003. He was Dean of the School of Finance (SoF-HSG) from 2015 to 2019 and has been Academic Director of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (FSI-HSG) since 2022. Furthermore, over the course of his previous activities at HSG, he has been active in self-administration on numerous university committees. In addition to his academic track record, Manuel Ammann is also distinguished by his high level of practical relevance. Among other things, he has been a member of the Board of Directors of St.Galler Kantonalbank AG since 2010 and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Neue Bank AG (Vaduz) since 2020. As he assumes the office of President of HSG, Manuel Ammann will resign from his boards of directors and advisory mandates in compliance with the applicable statutory deadlines.

Manuel Ammann is married and the father of three children. The family lives in Niederteufen (AR).