Swiss central bank boss to step down

Jordan took over at the top of the SNB in 2012. KEYSTONE/© KEYSTONE / ANTHONY ANEX

Thomas Jordan, who has been at the helm of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) for over a decade, will leave the role at the end of September, the bank said on Friday.

“The Bank Council and Governing Board deeply regret Thomas Jordan’s decision and thank him warmly for his many years of outstanding commitment in the interests of a stability-oriented monetary policy and for his excellent service to the SNB and the country. They wish him all the best for the forthcoming new chapter in his life,” the SNB wrote in a statement on Friday morning.

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Jordan, who was born in 1963, said in the statement that “having overcome the various challenges of recent years, the time is now right for me to step down”.

Jordan joined the SNB in 1997, became a member of the Governing Board in 2007 and took over as chairman in 2012.

The SNB did not provide any further information on a successor.

No stranger to crises

Viewed widely as the epitome of a diligent technocrat, the Harvard-educated economics professor was not afraid to take big and sometimes unpopular decisions.

The 61-year-old took the helm of the central bank after his predecessor Philipp Hildebrand was forced to step down.

A contrast to the flamboyant Hildebrand, Jordan assumed the task of steering the SNB through the eurozone crisis.

“Thomas Jordan is very Swiss – he’s very capable, but also very modest. He knows the SNB from back to front, really knows his stuff, but he’s not arrogant at all,” one Swiss economist – who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter – told Reuters.

“He’s disciplined and prepared, but always in control and not prone to making gaffes,” the economist said. “He’s the sort of person you’d like to be your neighbour.”

Jordan’s first priority was fighting appreciation pressure on the safe-haven Swiss franc. Initially, he maintained the minimum exchange rate policy of his predecessor.

Break with previous policy

But by 2015 the pressure was growing. The SNB was spending billions every week defending the rate, and Jordan scrapped the policy, sending the franc surging in value and upending global currency markets.

Despite heavy criticism from Swiss exporters, Jordan stood firm, backed by unconventional policies such as the world’s lowest interest rates and foreign currency purchases to deter investor appetite in the franc.

He stuck to the policy even as the franc weakened in later years.

Meanwhile, the central bank’s foreign currency reserves ballooned to a almost a trillion dollars making, the SNB’s own earnings highly volatile.

In 2022, the central bank racked up a loss of CHF132.5 billion ($149 billion) – the biggest in its 117-year history.

This meant the SNB would not make a payout to the Swiss government or local governments, but it was not an issue for Jordan, who stressed the importance of fighting inflation, with profits and losses a side effect.

He resisted calls for the SNB to uses its massive balance sheet to invest in environmental concerns, or plug holes in the Swiss pension system.

As a resolute defender of central bank independence, such moves would be anathema to Jordan, who joined the SNB as an economic adviser in 1997 and occasionally lectures in economics at the University of Bern.

When inflation returned to Switzerland in 2022, he changed tack on monetary policy and raised interest rates again.

Jordan was criticised by some members of the Swiss business community, who feared the franc would surge again, but the central bank was successful in keeping inflation much lower than other countries.

Jordan was also closely involved in the rescue of Credit Suisse last year, providing billions of francs in emergency liquidity to ease its takeover by UBS.