On the Move

BCGE appoints new head of corporate banking and trade finance

On the Move

BCGE appoints new head of corporate banking and trade finance

Swiss bank Banque Cantonale de Genève (BCGE) has appointed Eric Balmer as its new head of corporate banking and trade finance, effective September 1.

Balmer will join the bank from working capital solutions provider Global Supply Chain Finance, where he has been chief executive since 2022.

Prior to this, he spent most of his nearly 30-year career at Credit Suisse, where he began as a credit analyst and rose to become managing director, a member of the management committee for corporate and investment banking, and head of department financing solutions.

In this role, he was responsible for investment banking lending, factoring and structured finance, among other activities, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The BCGE corporate banking and trade finance division supports corporate clients in Switzerland and France, multinational corporations – particularly in the real estate and construction sectors – and public bodies, as well as the bank’s commodity trading activities.

Balmer will take over from Nicolas Demierre, who has been acting as interim head of corporate banking and trade finance since March 1. When Balmer joins BCGE, Demierre will return to his post as the bank’s global head of commodity finance. Demierre took over from Yves Spörri, who is set to join Arab Bank (Switzerland) as chief executive on January 1, 2026.

“The board of directors and the executive board are delighted to entrust Eric Balmer with a business unit that boasts in-depth expertise and can support companies of all sizes at every stage of their development – ​​both in their domestic activities and their projects abroad,” says Nicolas Krügel, chief executive of BCGE.

As a cantonal bank, around three quarters of BCGE’s capital is held by Genevan public authorities, while the remainder is traded on the Swiss SIX exchange.