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 1 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 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 telecom company Sunrise, CEO at Bluewin and held leading positions at Swisscom, most recently as Chief Strategy Officer and member of the Group Executive Board.
Christoph Brand currently holds the following mandates: Member of the Board of Directors Amag Group AG and Chairman of the Board of Directors 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.
Andy Heiz currently holds the following mandates: member of the 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 University of La Sapienza (Rome) and Chartered Financial Analyst, completed an MBA and Advanced Management Programme at IESE Business School (Barcelona) and the Certificate of Quantitative Finance programme in London. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the University of Zurich for their MSc. programme in quantitative finance.
Since October 2014, he has been Head of the Trading & Sales business area and a member of the Executive Board of Axpo Holding AG. From 2009 to 2014, he was responsible for operations in the field of International Trading & Origination for Axpo Trading AG (up to 2012: EGL AG; since 2018: Axpo Solutions AG) and served as a member of its Executive Board. He was CEO of EGL Italia between 2007 and 2009 and Managing Director of EGL España from 2001 to 2007.
Domenico De Luca is a member of the following Boards of Directors: Axpo Solutions AG and Axpo Italia SpA. He is also on the Board of Managers of Axpo U.S. LLC.
Chief Financial Officer, Swiss and Dutch national
Joris Gröflin, lic. oec. HSG and CEMS Master, has been Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and a member of the Executive Board of Axpo Holding AG since 1 April 2019. He previously held management roles at Rieter Holding AG in Winterthur from 2006 onwards, serving as Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Group Executive Committee from 2011 to 2019. From 2001 to 2006, he worked in various roles (most recently as manager) at A.T. Kearney in Switzerland.
Joris Gröflin currently holds the following mandates: Chairman of the Boards of Directors of Axpo Power AG, Axpo Services AG and Axpo Solutions AG, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of CKW AG and member of the Board of Trustees of PKE Vorsorgestiftung Energie and Chairman of the Board of Directors for “Axpo Volt Beteiligung AG”.
Chief Executive Officer CKW, Swiss national
Martin Schwab holds a degree in Business Administration HF, is an expert in accounting and financial controlling and has an MBA from the University of Rochester, N.Y. He 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. 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 the Finance Director and Deputy Managing Director of the Compass Group (Switzerland) AG and Management Reporting Manager of the Compass Group in London. He was the CFO of Selecta AG from 1999 to 2002 and before that commercial director at Dr. Siegrist AG.
Martin Schwab is a member of the following boards: 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 1 June 2021. In this role, she is integral in leading the steering functions Corporate Strategy & Economics, Corporate Human Resources, Ethics & Compliance, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs, Technology Management, Partnering & Investing and Transformation & Group Projects. She was Chief Marketing & Operations Officer at Microsoft Switzerland from 2019 to 2021, prior to which she worked mainly in the telecom sector (Telia Company, Swisscom, Motorola and others). For the Sweden-based Telia Company, she managed the business in Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark (with revenues totalling CHF 1.5 billion) as a member of the Group Executive Management. She holds a Master’s degree in business strategy from the International Business School ESSEC (Paris).
Further mandates: Member of the 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: HCL Technologies.
Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Hanspeter Fässler (dipl. Masch.-Ing. (mechanical engineer) ETHZ/Dr. sc. techn.) has been a member of the Board of Directors since March 2017. He is also a member of the Strategy Committee and has been Chairman of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee since January 2018. He has worked as an independent board member since 2015. Prior to that, he was with ABB for about 25 years, during which time he assumed various national and international responsibilities, including as CEO of ABB Switzerland.
Other mandates: ANYbotics AG (Chairman), Dätwyler Infra IT AG (Chairman), Dätwyler Holding AG (Vice Chairman) and Hatebur Umformmaschinen AG (Vice Chairman).
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 became Managing Director of Sika Schweiz AG in July 2018. Prior to that, he worked in the primary 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, acting as its Chairman from 2009 to 2013.
Other mandates: Eduard Meier AG, Eduard Meier Verwaltung AG, Tägerhard Kies AG, MOT Transport AG and cementaargau.ch (Vice Chairman).
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. He has worked as an independent corporate consultant, with a focus on interim management and M&A transaction management (Kreis2 AG), and company director since 2017. Prior to that, he worked for the Graubünden energy company Repower in various senior management positions for around 12 years, most recently as CFO and thus also a member of the Executive Board, during which time he had a significant impact on the company’s business and operations. He previously worked as a legal counsel for 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 Stiftung Gesundheitsversorgung Oberengadin, Member of the Board of Directors of Raiffeisenbank Bündner Rheintal, Member of the Board of Directors of Laudinella AG, Member of the Municipal Executive Committee and Chairman of the School Commission of the Municipality of Jenins.
Member 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 2022 he is also a member of the Strategy Committee. Prior to that, he was a member of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee until June 2019. Since 2015, he has worked as an independent senior adviser. 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: currently limits his work to charitable foundations and associations in the fields of education and culture.
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.
Member of the Board of Directors, German national
Katja Pluto holds a Diploma in Financial Mathematics from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and an M.Phil (Finance) from the University of Cambridge. She has been member of the Board of Directors since March 2023 and a member of the Audit and Finance Committee. Until end 2022, she was Chief Risk Officer for Europe and Middle East at Zurich Insurance Group. Between 2007 and 2016, she held various senior risk management positions at HSBC in London, most recently as Chief Risk Officer for HSBC Global Banking & Markets, Europe. Before that, she worked on market and credit risk at the banking supervision directorate of Deutsche Bundesbank.
Other mandates: Member of the Audit Committee, European Investment Bank, Luxembourg; Member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Risk Committee, MS Reinsurance, Zürich.
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 been the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) representative for the canton of Thurgau in the Council of States since December 2019. He was a member of the Canton of Thurgau’s Governing Council from June 2006 to May 2020. Prior to that, he was a communal council leader for 18 years, ten of them full-time and eight years part-time in combination with his work as business and national news editor for various Swiss newspapers.
Other mandates: Chairman of Lignum Holzwirtschaft Schweiz (from May 2021), Chairman of Branche Wein Thurgau, Chairman of Schweizer Stiftung für Oberflächentechnik SSO.
Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss national
Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler (Electrical Engineering 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 Swisscom AG Group Executive Board since 2011, responsible for the SME business, has additionally served as Chief Digital Officer since 2016, responsible for Swisscom’s digital business and since June 2023 responsible for Swisscom Mandates and Projects.
Other mandates: Swisscom Directories AG (Chairman), Foundation Schweiz and others.
Committees
Audit and Finance Committee
Stefan Kessler, Chair
Peter Kreuzberg, Vertreter BoD im Corporate Risk Council
Stephan Kuhn
Katja Pluto
Strategy Committee
Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, Chair
Hanspeter Fässler
Stephan Kuhn
Jakob Stark
Compensation and Nomination Committee
Hanspeter Fässler, Chair
Martin Keller
Peter Kreuzberg
Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler
