Switzerland promoted from within for its chief finance negotiator. The new ambassador is a 20-year veteran of the Swiss diplomatic corps.
The Swiss government is naming Daniela Stoffel to run the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters, or SIF, it said in a statement on Wednesday. The SIF is Switzerland's diplomatic spearhead for anything finance-related including European Union market access, data-swapping arrangements following the fall of banking secrecy, reforms to corporate tax law under international pressure on base erosion and profit-shifting, or BEPS.
Stoffel replaces Joerg Gasser, a veteran diplomat who leaves Bern next month, from March 1. The 50-year-old is currently head of political staff in the SIF. She is the first woman to hold the job since the SIF was founded within the Swiss government in 2010.
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Stoffel, who studied philosophy, economics, and languages, entered diplomatic service in 1998 and has held positions in the finance department as well as Switzerland's foreign ministry. In 2005, she took over the public relations and culture for the Swiss embassy in Washington, D.C.
Four years later, she moved to Berlin as head of economic and financial affairs. In 2012, she was promoted to deputy head of that foreign mission and three years ago, she was seconded to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.
Her main challenges will be to keep Switzerland's financial center out of the crosshairs of grey lists; this year, the alpine nation is updating anti-money laundering rules to bring it into line with the OECD's Financial Action Task Force, or FATA. Digitization as well as competition from rival money havens like Singapore and Hong Kong are other hot spots.
