Executives & Directors Responsibility and leadership
Responsibility for the management of the Axpo Group lies with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who is supported by the Deputy CEO and the Executive Board. The CEO has overall responsibility to the Board of Directors. The Executive Board, chaired by the CEO, coordinates and monitors the Group's business activities.
Executive Board
Chief Executive Officer, Swiss national
Christoph Brand has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Axpo Group since May 2020 and holds a degree in economics from the University of Bern. He also completed the Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD.
From 2012 to 2020, he held various positions at the TX Group (formerly Tamedia), most recently as CEO of TX Markets, which includes the companies Ricardo, Tutti, Jobs and Homegate. Previously, he was CEO of the software company Adcubum, CEO of the telecoms company Sunrise, CEO of Bluewin and held leading positions at Swisscom, most recently as Chief Strategy Officer and member of the Group Executive Board.
Other mandates: Board of Directors of Amag Group AG and Chairman of the Board of Directors of CKW AG
Members of the Executive Board
Head Business Area Generation & Distribution, Deputy CEO, Swiss national
Andy Heiz, dipl. El.-Ing. (electrical engineer) ETH and MBA INSEAD, has been Head of the Generation & Distribution business area and a member of the Executive Board of Axpo Holding AG since November 2014 and Deputy CEO since 1 October 2019.
From 2007 to September 2014, he worked for ABB, first as Head of Corporate Strategy, and, from 2011, as Head of Product Group Renewables. Prior to that, he held various management positions (most recently Associate Principal) at McKinsey & Company in the United States as well as ABB Alstom Power in Malaysia and ABB Power Generation in Switzerland.
Other mandates: Board of Directors of Axpo Power AG, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kernkraftwerk Leibstadt AG, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kernkraftwerk Gösgen AG and member of the Commission for the Decommissioning and Waste Disposal Fund for Nuclear Facilities.
Head Business Area Trading & Sales, Swiss and Italian national
Domenico De Luca, M. Sc. Mechanical Engineering from the Università La Sapienza (Rome) and Chartered Financial Analyst CFA, holds an MBA, completed the AMP at the IESE Business School and the Certificate of Quantitative Finance Programme in London. Domenico De Luca has been Head of Trading & Sales and a member of the Executive Board of Axpo Holding AG since October 2014.
From 2009 to 2014, he was responsible for business activities in the International Trading & Origination division of Axpo Trading AG (until 2012 EGL AG; since 2018 Axpo Solutions AG) and a member of its Executive Board. Between 2007 and 2009 he was CEO of EGL Italia and before that Managing Director of EGL España from 2001 to 2007.
Other mandates: Board of Directors Axpo Solutions AG and Axpo Italia SpA, Board of Managers Axpo U.S. LLC, Member of the Advisory Board ETH and University of Zurich for their M. Sc. programme in Quantitative Finance.
Chief Financial Officer, Swiss and German
Harald Gauck, Doctor of Physics from the University of Konstanz, has been Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and a member of the Executive Board of Axpo Holding AG since 1 January 2024.
He has held various management positions in Axpo's finance division since 2008, most recently as Head of Controlling & Services in the Trading & Sales business division. He is a Swiss and German citizen. Harald Gauck has many years of in-depth experience in all areas of energy trading as well as in the production and distribution of energy.
Other mandates: Chairman of the Board of Directors of Axpo Power AG, Axpo Services AG and Axpo Solutions AG, Vice chairman of the Board of Directors of CKW AG.
Chief Executive Officer CKW, Swiss national
Martin Schwab has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CKW AG since April 2018 and a member of the Executive Board of Axpo Holding AG since February 2011. He holds a degree in Business Administration HF, is an expert in accounting and controlling and has an MBA from the University of Rochester, N.Y.
From February 2011 to March 2018, he was Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Axpo Holding AG. From 2005 to the end of 2010, he was CFO of the Selecta Group. Prior to that, he was Finance Director and Deputy Managing Director of Compass Group (Switzerland) AG and Management Reporting Manager of Compass Group in London. From 1999 to 2002 he was Chief Financial Officer at Selecta AG and previously Commercial Director at Dr Siegrist AG.
Other mandates: Board of Directors, EWA-energie Uri AG; Board of Trustees, PKE Vorsorgestiftung Energie (Chairman); Board of Directors, Association of Swiss Electricity Companies (VSE); Board of Directors, Central Switzerland Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHZ).
Chief Operating Officer, Danish national
Henriette Wendt has been Chief Operating Officer (COO) since June 2021 and in this role integrally manages the steering functions, Corporate Human Resources, Ethics & Compliance, Technology Management, Partnering & Investing, Transformation & Group Projects and Corporate Procurement. She holds a Master's degree in Business Strategy from the International Business School ESSEC (Paris).
From 2019 to 2021, she worked at Microsoft Switzerland as Marketing & Operations Officer. Previously, she worked mainly in the telecoms sector (Telia Company, Swisscom, Motorola, etc.). For the Swedish Telia Company, she managed the business in Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark (turnover CHF 1.5 billion) as a member of the Group Executive Board.
Other mandates: Board of Directors CKW
Board of Directors
The Board of Directors of the Axpo Group is appointed by the Shareholders’ General Meeting. Members are proposed by the shareholders and elected for a 2-year term. They can be re-elected. Members do not perform executive functions within the Group.
Chairman of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Thomas Sieber (lic. oec. HSG) has been Chairman of the Board since March 2016 and was also Delegate of the Board from October 2019 until the end of April 2020. He was also a member of the Audit and Finance Committee from 2016 to January 2018, a member of the Strategy Committee until 2022 and a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee until March 2023.
Thomas Sieber was CEO of Salt Mobile SA from 2009 to 2012 and then its Chairman from 2012 to the end of 2015. Prior to that, he held senior management positions at Hewlett Packard Inc. and Fujitsu Siemens Computers AG.
Other mandates: Board of Directors of HCL Technologies.
Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Stephan Kuhn (lic. oec. HSG) has been a member of the Board of Directors since January 2018 and a member of the Audit and Finance Committee since January 2019. Since January 2024 he is Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.
Prior to that, he was a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee until June 2019 and a member of the Strategy Committee from January 2022 to January 2024. Since 2015, he has worked as an independent senior advisor. From 2002 to 2015, Stephan Kuhn worked for Ernst&Young (EY), most recently as Head of Tax and Legal Consulting at EY in EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) and in parallel from 2011 to 2014 was responsible for advising and auditing financial institutions (banks, insurance companies and asset managers) in Switzerland.
Other mandates: Charitable foundations and associations in the fields of education and culture.
Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Martin Keller (dipl. civil engineer HTL/SIA) has been a member of the Board of Directors since April 2019 and a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee since June 2019.
He has been Managing Director of Sika Schweiz AG since July 2018. He previously worked in the construction and cement industries. From 2008 to 2019, he was a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Aargau and the Commission for Environment, Construction, Transport, Energy and Spatial Planning Committee, acting as its Chairman from 2009 to 2013.
Other mandates: Board of Directors of Eduard Meier AG, Board of Directors of Eduard Meier Verwaltung AG, Board of Directors of Tägerhard Kies AG, Board of Directors of MOT Transport AG and President of the cementaargau.ch association.
Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Stefan Kessler (lic. iur. HSG, LL.M., lawyer) has been a member of the Board of Directors since January 2018 and Chairman of the Audit and Finance Committee since January 2019.
Since 2017, Stefan Kessler has worked as an independent management consultant specialising in interim management and M&A transaction management (Kreis2 AG) and as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to this, he worked for around 12 years at the Graubünden-based energy company Repower in various management positions. Most recently, he played a key role in shaping the company as CFO and thus a member of Repower's Executive Board. Prior to that, he worked as legal counsel at a bank and as a lawyer at a large commercial law firm in Zurich.
Other mandates: Chairman of the Board of Directors of esolva ag, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Upper Engadine Healthcare Foundation, Board of Directors of Raiffeisenbank Bündner Rheintal, Board of Directors of Laudinella AG, member of the municipal council and Chairman of the school commission of the municipality of Jenins.
Member of the Board of Directors, German national
Peter Kreuzberg (economics graduate and Dr. rer. pol.) has been a member of the Board of Directors, the Audit and Finance Committee and the Corporate Risk Council since March 2017. Since March 2023, he has been a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.
Since 2013, he has worked as an independent senior advisor in energy and finance. From 2004 to 2012, he was a member of the Board of Managing Directors of RWE Supply & Trading, with commercial responsibility in the fields of asset optimisation and energy trading. Between 2002 and 2004, he was in charge of commodity risk management for the RWE Group. He was previously responsible for structured products trading as a director at Enron Europe Ltd in London.
Other mandates: none.
Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Samuel Leupold, Dipl. Masch.-Ing. ETHZ and MBA INSEAD, has been a member of the Board of Directors and member of the Strategy Committee since January 2024.
He is currently an independent consultant and member of the Board of Directors. Previously, he was CEO of Orsted Wind Power (formerly Dong Wind Power), the world's leading company for the development and operation of offshore wind farms, for several years. Prior to that, Leupold worked for the BKW Group as Head of International Energy and Trading. He began his career at ABB and worked at McKinsey as a consultant, also for companies in the energy sector.
Other mandates: Chairman of the Board of Directors of CORIO Generation and member of the Board of Directors of Schlumberger Ltd.
Member of the Board of Directors, German national
Katja Pluto is a business mathematician (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) and also holds an M.Phil in Finance from the University of Cambridge. She has been a member of the Board of Directors since March 2023. She is also a member of the Audit and Finance Committee.
Until the end of 2022, she was Chief Risk Officer for Europe and the Middle East at Zurich Insurance Group. From 2007 to 2016, Ms Pluto was Head of Risk Management for various business divisions at HSBC in London, most recently as Chief Risk Officer for the European corporate and trading business. Prior to that, she worked as a market and credit risk auditor in the banking supervision department of the German Bundesbank.
Other mandates: Board of Directors and member of the Audit Committee of the European Investment Bank, Board of Directors and Chairwoman of the Risk Committee, MS Reinsurance.
Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Jakob Stark, Dr phil. I, has been a member of the Board of Directors and the Strategy Committee since January 2021.
He has represented the canton of Thurgau in the Council of States for the SVP since December 2019. From June 2006 to May 2020, he was a member of the Thurgau cantonal government. Prior to this, he was mayor for 18 years, ten of which were full-time and eight part-time, in combination with working as a business and national editor for various Swiss newspapers.
Other mandates: President of Lignum Holzwirtschaft Schweiz, President of Branche Wein Thurgau, President of the Swiss Foundation for Surface Technology SSO.
Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, electrical engineer HTL, Executive MBA HSG, has been a member of the Board of Directors and the Strategy Committee since March 2017. He has chaired the Strategy Committee since January 2021 and has also been a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee since January 2020. He has been a member of the Executive Board of Swisscom Ltd since 2011, responsible for the SME business, Chief Digital Officer for Swisscom's digital business since 2016 and responsible for Swisscom mandates and projects since June.
Other mandates: Chairman of the Board of Directors of Swisscom Directories AG, Chairman of the Swiss Foundation and others.
Committees
Audit and Finance Committee
Stefan Kessler, Chair
Peter Kreuzberg, Representative BoD in Corporate Risk Council
Stephan Kuhn
Katja Pluto
Strategy Committee
Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, Chair
Samuel Leupold
Jakob Stark
Compensation and Nomination Committee
Stephan Kuhn, Chair
Martin Keller
Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler
