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Who Put the Rot in Herr Hummler’s Wurst?

Posted on September 12, 2011 by William Black | 5 comments

I write this column as I am flying home from presenting a keynote address Friday to the 32^nd annual Burgenstock Meeting (now held in Interlaken, Switzerland). The Burgenstock meeting is one of the top international meetings on financial derivatives and attracts a mixture of senior regulators, market participants, and a scattering of academics. I changed the presentation I intended to make entirely in order to respond to Thursday’s famous Thursday keynote presenter, Dr. Hummler, the head of the oldest private bank in Swizerland. Dr. Hummler is famous for his monthly newsletters, which goes out to a select mailing list of 100,000 and often prompt significant discussion. I found his keynote address provocative. I was not adequately aware of his work, so I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. researching his positions and then prepared a new keynote address responding to his central thesis.

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