What would you expect from someone whose CV includes "studies and final degree from the humanistic gymnasium in Basel"? A trainee social worker adept on the high parallel bars, perhaps? You would be wrong. Forget "humanistic" in its usual meaning of a system or process which puts human interests and the mind of man before all else. Humanism also applies to literary culture and, in the case of Hans-Peter Bauer, means the study of classical Latin and Greek. And what about the gymnasium and images of parallel bars and triple somersaults on a wooden horse? The reality is less exciting. This gymnasium simply means a school.
But there is little else which has been simple about the career of Hans-Peter Bauer, who recently arrived from Zurich to become one of the overlords of the burgeoning fixed-income, sales, trading and derivatives business of UBS in London. While he would be loath to refer to himself as a rocket scientist or a quant, he has all of the personal attributes and qualifications. Progressing from classics in Basel, Bauer read mathematics at university in Zurich and then took a PhD in mathematics and a thesis in algebraic topology at the Federal High School of Technology (FHTZ).