ZURICH—Roman Geiser, for the past two years chief operating officer of Burson-Marsteller’s EMEA region, is joining leading Swiss public relations firm Farner Consulting, where he will replaced current managing director Christian Koening.
With fees of around $13 million, Farner is the largest public relations business in Switzerland by some distance. It if best known for its corporate, financial and public affairs work, and serves clients including UBS, Credit Suisse, Tyco, Dassault, Heineken, Novartis, Sanofi Aventis, Swiss Banking, and a number of regional and national government agencies. Celebrating its 60th year in business in 2011, it was recently named our Consultancy of the Year for the DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) region.
In the fall of 2012, Koenig will transfer both majority holding and the operational management of Farner to Geiser. Koenig—who has managed the firm alongside Farner partners Jacqueline Moeri, Daniel Heller and Urs Knapp—will replace chairman of the board Niklaus Knuesel at the next general meeting and will remain a Farner partner.
Geiser is currently COO of EMEA for Burson-Marsteller and president of BPRA, the Association of PR Agencies in Switzerland. Until recently he also served as board chairman of Burson-Marsteller Switzerland, and was a vice president of the board of directors of Young & Rubicam Holding Switzerland.
Before joining Burson-Marsteller, Geiser worked for economiesuisse, an association promoting Swiss business and industry that serves as a public relations agency for the general Swiss economy.