Mathias Papenfuss, head of Operations at Clearstream, has been elected chairman of the European Central Securities Depository Association (ECSDA) for a three-year term. The association elected a new board of directors and executive committee at its annual general meeting in Prague last Friday.
ECSDA, which has 41 members, represents CSDs from 37 European countries. Collectively they processed more than 725 million securities transactions worth more than €900 trillion in 2012, according to the association.
Papenfuss previously was vice chair of the association. He replaces Joël Mérère of Euroclear as chairman, who held the position since 2004.
Two vice chairs, György Dudás of Hungarian CSD KELER Ltd and Paolo Cittadini of Italian CSD Monte Titoli, also were elected. Georg Zinner of Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG will continue to be treasurer.
Mérère presided over the 2006 merger of ECSDA and CEECSDA, the former Central and Eastern European Securities Depositories Association. He also helped launch the first permanent ECSDA Secretariat in Brussels in 2010.
"Under his chairmanship, ECSDA went from being a network of post-trade professionals designing common European standards for the industry, primarily to support cross-border links between CSDs, to a significant trade association shaping the policy debate on post-trade in Europe," the association said in a statement.
Papenfuss says: "It is a great honor to have been elected as chairman of ECSDA. I have been involved in the work of the association since its early days in the late 1990s, and I am convinced that ECSDA has a crucial role to play in helping CSDs to cope with future economic and regulatory challenges. I would like to express my gratitude to Joël Mérère for his exceptional dedication and achievements for the association over the past years, and I look forward to representing the views of European CSDs in the years to come."