Per Wimmer
Per Thanning Wimmer | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 18, 1968 Denmark |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, financier, author, space advocate |
| Years active | 1996–present |
| Known for | Founding Wimmer Financial; first tandem skydive above Mount Everest; Virgin Galactic founding astronaut |
Per Thanning Wimmer (born August 18, 1968) is a Danish entrepreneur, financier, author, and advocate for space exploration.
Education
In 1987, Wimmer completed his studies at Slagelse Gymnasium, where he focused on physics and mathematics. The following year, he obtained a French Baccalaureate with an emphasis on philosophy and French literature.
Between 1988 and 1993, he earned both Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in law from the University of Copenhagen. During this period, he also contributed as a student representative on the Governing Board of the Faculty of Law at the same university. Additionally, from 1991 to 1992, he pursued a Master of Laws at the University of London.
Wimmer further advanced his education by acquiring a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University, specializing in finance, international relations, and business.
Career
Up until early 1996, Wimmer served in the office of Henning Christophersen, Vice-President of the European Commission, where his work concentrated on the European Monetary Union and the EU budget.
From 1996 to 1997, he worked as an Associate management consultant at McKinsey & Company with a focus on media industry clients.
Between 1998 and 2002, Wimmer held various positions at Goldman Sachs in New York City and London. He left the firm as Executive Director responsible for Institutional Sales of European Equity products, advising financial institutions across Scandinavia. Subsequently, in 2002, he took on comparable roles at Collins Stewart and MF Global/Man Securities, affiliated with the global hedge fund Man Group.
On October 4, 2007, Wimmer established Wimmer Financial, an international corporate advisory firm specializing in global corporate finance, share trading, real estate investments, and natural resource sectors.
Additional activities
On October 6, 2008, Wimmer achieved a milestone by completing the first-ever tandem skydive above Mount Everest alongside tandem master Ralph Mitchell.
He is a founding astronaut with Virgin Galactic under Sir Richard Branson’s initiative and has held a spaceflight reservation with Space Adventures since 2001. In December 2008, he acquired a ticket for the XCOR Lynx rocketplane mission that was later canceled. Until Andreas Mogensen's flight in 2015, Wimmer anticipated being the inaugural Danish individual to travel to space aboard SpaceShipTwo.
Publications
Wimmer authored Wall Street, published in September 2011, which examines financial market bubbles drawing on his extensive experience in global finance. His second book, The Green Bubble, released in June 2014 through Swedish think tank Timbro, explores the possibility of a speculative bubble within the renewable energy industry.