Chris Van Aeken was the Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley (Switzerland) AG, formerly Bank Morgan Stanley AG from February 2012 until June 2016. Bank Morgan Stanley focused on global wealth management with branches in Zurich, Geneva, Hong Kong and Singapore until its sale to a third-party bank in September 2015.  

Chris joined Morgan Stanley (London) in 1996 as an Equity Derivatives Trader after having worked at Barclays Capital (London) and KBC Bank (Brussels). In 1999, Chris became responsible for Market Risk Management within the Morgan Stanley Equity Division.   

From May 2000 until November 2001, he worked as Product Management head developing Financial Planning software for Customer Dialogue Systems, a Belgian technology company, later acquired by Accenture.   

He re-joined Morgan Stanley in early 2002 as the Head of Risk Management and Chief Operating Officer for International Wealth Management (IWM). Chris was responsible for all aspects of financial performance, technology and infrastructure. He was a director of several Morgan Stanley companies. In 2007 he moved to Hong Kong to take on the role of Deputy Head of Private Wealth Management Asia. In 2010, Chris was appointed Head of Products and Services for IWM and chairman of the Supervisory Board of Bank Morgan Stanley AG (Switzerland). In 2012, he became the CEO of Bank Morgan Stanley AG where he was responsible for its strategy and performance. He managed the sale of the Swiss-based assets in 2015 and oversaw the subsequent wind down and liquidation of the entity until June 2016.  

Chris graduated from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) with Magna cum Laude degrees in Romance Languages (1985) and Applied Economics (1986).   He received an MBA (Finance) from the University of Chicago in 1987.  He has published several articles on financial products and markets.

Chris is now in the process of launching Van Aeken Advisors, a business and investment consultancy. He has been appointed in June 2016 as an independent director to the board of Iceland Securities (Islensk Verdbref) with a focus on governance and leading asset management practices. He is also an angel (early stage) investor in a number of financial services related companies.