Otto Nageli, a longtime futures and options executive, died on May 5, 2022. JLN interviewed him in May of 2019 for the History of Financial Futures video series.
In Part One, Nageli talked about getting his start at Credit Suisse, where he became the youngest branch manager the company ever had. He later got an offer to become a member of the executive management of the Bank of Tokyo in Zurich. Later he got a call asking him if he wanted to become the CEO of the first-ever fully electronic exchange and clearing house. He said yes, and he took over as the CEO of SOFFEX, which was launched in 1988, a year after the "Black Monday" stock market crash.
Nageli talked about his experience with the combining of SOFFEX with Germany's DTB electronic exchange to form Eurex, the first transnational derivatives market.
His first job at Eurex was as project manager for non IT issues, helping to organize that combination, and then his role was to make sure Eurex came together in a smooth transition. Eurex had started out trading options, and then began offering index futures.
"At the start," Nageli said, "the options market was considered more important from an asset management perspective, particularly for private banking."
Eventually he was part of the management team and became the deputy CEO of Eurex under Andreas Preuss.
The combined Swiss and German exchange had a half German and half Swiss board of directors. Nageli said some people thought that if the exchange had four members on the executive committee, the assumption was that if they ended up with a tie it would be two Germans against two Swiss members, but in fact "it was always one German and one Swiss against one German and one Swiss," he said.