Heinrich Schaller has stepped down as joint CEO of the Vienna Stock Exchange-led Central and Eastern European Stock Exchange Group (CEESEG), to be replaced by Petr Koblic, currently chairman of the board of the Prague Stock Exchange.
CEESEG, comprising the exchanges of Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague and Vienna, will now be jointly managed by Koblic and Michael Buhl – the current joint CEO of CEESEG and Wiener Börse, the Vienna Stock Exchange’s operating company. Buhl has been joint CEO of CEESEG since January 2010, when the new holding company was founded, and joint CEO of Wiener Börse since 2005.
Schaller, who was a key player in the creation of the four-exchange group, was appointed joint CEO of Wiener Börse in June 2006 and has been joint CEO of CEESEG since 2010.
Replacing Schaller at Wiener Börse is Birgit Kuras, who has been appointed joint CEO and will jointly run the business with Buhl from March. Kuras currently heads Austrian bank Raiffeisen Centro Bank’s CEE equity capital markets and M&A Austria teams.
As early as May 2004, Wiener Börse began building up majority stakes in the three other exchanges that now make up the group. The four exchanges were rebranded as the CEE Stock Exchange Group in late September 2009.
“The Vienna Stock Exchange needs to prove its resilience in the currently volatile market. I am convinced that with Birgit Kuras and Michael Buhl we have a strong team that will continue the development of the Austrian capital market in these difficult times,” said Friedrich Kadrnoska, chairman of the supervisory board of Wiener Börse.