Paul Meier

Born in 1947, Paul grew up in Kilchberg near Zürich. After finishing his schooling, he joined the international trading house of Volkart Brothers in Winterthur, which dealt mainly in coffee and cotton. Following his two-year training, he was transferred to New York to work in the administration of their machine tool division. What was initially a two-year stint turned out to be 17 years. The machine tool division was closed in 1973 but, newly married, he wanted to stay in New York so he took a job in the coffee division of the firm. In 1975, he was entrusted with building up the derivatives department for Volkart’s worldwide commodity trading network.

Paul managed Volkart Brokerage Inc., later known as Marshall, French & Lucas, for ten years before deciding to return to Switzerland at the end of 1985. He joined UBS in Zürich, which had just started up a new section to handle the banks exchange traded derivatives. He was active on the trading side as well working on internal and external education. Two years after the merger of UBS and SBC in June 1998, he remains active in the ETD field for UBS Warburg.

Given his and his employers belief that it is necessary not only to further develop the knowledge and use of Derivatives but also to have a platform to network, share ideas and broaden view-points, he joined the board of SFOA in 1997.