Christoph Sievers is the new CEO of ERG, the Swiss Export Risk Guarantee agency. Sievers will assume Peter Silberschmidt’s functions until ERG becomes Seri, Swiss Export Risk Insurance.

Following 16 years of service, Silberschmidt will retire on April 1, 2006.

In the course of fine-tuning a revision of ERG, Switzerland’s parliament has determined that Seri’s CEO is to be recruited from the ranks of the organisation’s future board of directors. An interim CEO is therefore needed until January 1, 2007, when Seri becomes operational.

Sievers has devoted a number of years of his career to the finance and reinsurance industries: from 1980 to 2004, at Swiss Re, he held various management positions including, as a member of senior management for 10 years, strategy, controlling and operations in the corporate, Swiss and Asian sectors.

In 2005 he led a non-life insurance damage control project in Switzerland and the UK. He will be ERG’s CEO until December 31, 2006 until a definitive Seri CEO, to be appointed by Seri’s new board of directors in the course of the coming year, will take over.