Philipp Michael Hildebrand

Philipp Michael Hildebrand (born 19 July 1963) is a Swiss banker. He was head of the Swiss central bank, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from 2010 until he resigned on 9 January 2012 after controversy surrounding his wife's currency trading.

In January, 2010, the Swiss Federal Council had appointed him to the positions of chairman of the governing board of the central bank of the SNB in Zurich. He had been a member of the central bank's governing board since 2003. He currently serves as a vice chairman of BlackRock.

Education and career

Hildebrand attended the University of Toronto, Oxford University, and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He was part of a group of students that helped out during the Annual Meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There, he met leading international government officials and bankers,[citation needed] and in 1994 he began his professional career at WEF.

He worked at Moore Capital Management, a hedge fund in New York and London, where he met his wife.[3] He then worked as head of hedge funds for Geneva-based Union Bancaire Privée before he joined the SNB. Hildebrand was said to be the "youngest ever policy maker" when he joined the SNB in 2003.

Prior to his resignation from the SNB, he was a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, as well as vice-chairman of the Financial Stability Board. Since 2008, he has been a member of the Group of Thirty.

In late 2011, The Banker magazine named Hildebrand "Central Bank Governor of the Year 2012".

In 2012, Hildebrand served as a senior visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and still sits on its international advisory board.