Christian Forma

Christian Forma is Director and Head of Treasury at Wirtschafts- und Infrastrukturbank Hessen (WIBank), based in Offenbach am Main. He has held the Head of Treasury position since March 2021 and was appointed Director in August 2023. WIBank is a government-affiliated financial institution focused on development finance in Hesse, Germany. Forma led WIBank's first blockchain-based issuance, a token-based securities project executed as a cross-departmental initiative combining traditional capital markets expertise with distributed ledger technology, smart contracts, and digital payment processes. The project used a public blockchain and a trigger solution to achieve T+0 settlement, reducing settlement risk and enabling a fully traceable transaction history. External partners in technology, project management, and law were brought in alongside internal capability development. Coordination with regulatory authorities and the legal classification of the digital product were among the documented challenges; Forma has stated that regulatory and documentary aspects should be incorporated early into planning for future initiatives. WIBank also participated in ECB trials related to digital capital market infrastructure.

Forma's earlier career spans over two decades in capital markets. Prior to joining WIBank, he spent approximately 13 years at an institution where he held a role focused on interest rate options. Before that, he worked at DZ BANK on structured interest rate products from November 2004 to June 2007, and earlier at Mitsubishi Trust International in repo trading and at MTBC Bank Deutschland in repo, money markets, derivatives, and equities trading. He began his career at Commerzbank in retail equities. Since September 2020, he has been a lecturer at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, teaching on a Financial Markets Boot Camp programme aimed at junior financial market traders and corporate treasurers. He holds an Executive MBA from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, completed in 2020, and previously studied business and management at FOM Hochschule and BWL at VWA Frankfurt.