Pi Lunch with His Excellency Alexis Lautenberg, Ambassador of Switzerland & special guest speaker Dr. Peter Ludlow, Executive President of the European Strategy Forum – ‘Germany, Angela Merkel and the Future of the Euro’
Tuesday 29th June 12:30pm, Mayfair

Dr. Peter Ludlow is currently Executive President of the European Strategy Forum and Chairman of Parnassus LDA.  He is also a leading expert on the politics and institutions of the European Union. He is the founding director of the Brussels-based think-tank the Centre for European Policy Studies and chair of EuroComment, a publishing company. He combines experience gained in a long career as a historian at the University of London (UK) and European University Institute in Florence (IT), with an insider’s knowledge of policy-making at the highest levels of the European Union.  He has been educated at Oxford, Cambridge and Gottingen and is a visiting lecturer/professor at numerous universities and institutions in the EU, the US and Asia and a consultant to governmental and non-governmental bodies across the world.  He has received numerous prizes and fellowships, most notably the Prix Europe, 1999 from L’Academie des Marches de l’Est, Strasbourg, for services to European integration.  He is currently working on a number of projects including a monograph entitled ‘The European Council and the Making of the European Union 1969-2009’. 

Alexis Lautenberg was born in 1945 in Zurich, and is a citizen of Basle and Ascona, Canton Ticino. Alexis obtained a degree in Political Science at the University of Lausanne. After joining the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in 1974, he completed his diplomatic training in Berne, Geneva and Stockholm. In 1976 he was transferred to Warsaw, as Deputy to the Head of Mission, and in 1977 to the Swiss Delegation to EFTA and GATT in Geneva. In 1981 he became Head of the Economic Section at the Embassy of Switzerland in Bonn, where he was promoted to the rank of Counsellor in 1983. In 1985 he was appointed Deputy Director of the former Directorate of International Organisations, with the title of Minister. He took up the post of Head of the Economic and Finance Service at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in the following year. In 1993 the Federal Council appointed Alexis Ambassador and Head of the Swiss Mission to the European Communities in Brussels. From 1999 to 2004 he was Switzerland’s Ambassador to Italy, Malta and San Marino, with residence in Rome. Since October 2004 he has been Ambassador of Switzerland to the United Kingdom.  Mr Lautenberg was a Member of the Board of the Foundation for Research in International Banking and Finance (FRIBF) at California University, Riverside CA, USA from 1987 to 1994. He was Chairman of the Group for negotiations on financial services within the Uruguay Round from 1990 to 1991, and Chairman of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering from 1991 to 1992. From 1994 to 1999 he was a Member of the Board of the College of Europe in Bruges.

If you would like to attend please RSVP to Sara Nori

sn@picapital.co.uk

020 7529 5656