Bankvirksomhed og FinTech

Why organisations work with Mike Harris He has done the actual job, twice. First Direct (1989) and Egg (1998) were both built from scratch into category-defining UK consumer brands while sitting inside or alongside incumbent institutions, Midland Bank and Prudential. That kind of new-business creation inside a large organisation is rare among innovation speakers. He took Egg from concept to a £1bn flotation in under two years. When he talks about pace of execution, it is from a CEO who delivered it under public-market scrutiny. As Chairman of Group Innovation at RBS (2005-2009), he has worked both sides of the innovation problem: building the new business, and governing the innovation portfolio at scale inside a major bank. His operating framework comes directly from First Direct: customer-led, and built around how distinct segments actually want to be served. It is set out in Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) and applied through the IconicShift programme across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals and consumer health. As co-founder of Monument Partners and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith, he is still active at the investor and founder edge of financial services. The material is current. Biography highlights Founding CEO of First Direct (1989), the world’s first major 24/7 telephone bank, launched as a subsidiary of Midland Bank Founding CEO of Egg (1998); floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation Chief Executive of Mercury Communications (1991-1995), the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland, 2005 to 2009 Co-founder and Chairman of Garlik, sold to Experian in 2011; Tim Berners-Lee on its advisory board Author of Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley/Capstone, 2008); winner of the BT Flagship Award for Innovation, 2008 Co-founder of Monument Partners (2012), a FinTech-focused advisory firm; regular speaker at the MIT Sloan School mid-career MBA programme between 1996 and 2008 Biography First Direct launched in 1989 as a 24/7 telephone bank, owned by Midland but kept far enough away from it to behave differently. The result was a brand that has spent decades at or near the top of UK customer service rankings across every industry. The CEO who built it was Mike Harris. He left Midland to run Mercury Communications, the first major competitor to BT in UK telecoms, where turnover grew from £1bn to £1.6bn during his tenure. In 1995 he founded Prudential Banking, which became Egg in 1998. Egg floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 at a £1.3bn valuation, less than two years from launch. After leaving Egg, he turned to innovation governance. As Chairman of Group Innovation at Royal Bank of Scotland from 2005 to 2009, he built a group-wide innovation programme inside an institution then under acute strategic pressure. His book Find Your Lightbulb (Wiley, 2008) set out the operating principles. The IconicShift mentoring programme has since applied them across companies in FinTech, pharmaceuticals, food, fashion, law and consumer health. Most innovation speakers have either built a new business or governed innovation portfolios. Harris has done both, and continues to do both. He is co-founder of FinTech advisory firm Monument Partners, and a non-executive chairman at FinTech ventures including Monolith. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy and execution Customer-led growth Building new businesses inside large organisations Brand and proposition design FinTech and financial services innovation Entrepreneurship and scale-up leadership Digital identity and consumer trust Ideal for CEOs and group strategy leads in financial services and telecoms wrestling with category disruption Chief Innovation Officers and heads of new ventures who need to sponsor breakthrough propositions inside legacy structures Boards and ExCos of established consumer-facing organisations under pressure to reinvent the customer relationship FinTech founders and corporate venture investors looking for current operating perspective Audience outcomes A clearer view of why most innovation programmes produce activity instead of new customers, and what to do about it Operating principles for taking a new proposition from concept to revenue at speed, drawn from First Direct, Egg and Garlik A diagnostic for whether the current organisation can house the new business it is trying to build, and what to change if it cannot How chairmen and CEOs can use innovation governance to back the right bets without smothering them

Why organisations work with Myron Scholes He co-created the framework. The Black-Scholes model is his own work, used daily by traders and risk managers across global markets to value derivatives. Few academics have lived both the success and the failure of model-driven finance. Scholes was a principal at Long-Term Capital Management when it collapsed in 1998 and was rescued by a Federal Reserve-coordinated bailout. That makes him sharper on leverage and on what quantitative models miss. He still manages money. As Chief Investment Strategist at Janus Henderson Investors, Scholes contributes to real portfolios for institutional clients today. He arrives with credibility already established in senior financial and policy rooms. The 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize and co-authorship of “Taxes and Business Strategy”, a standard MBA text now in its fifth edition, mean audiences engage with the substance straight away. His central argument: risk distributions move over time, and the standard practice of treating them as fixed underestimates what can happen. That position separates his current commentary from most quantitative orthodoxy. Biography highlights Co-creator with Fischer Black of the Black-Scholes options pricing model, published in the Journal of Political Economy in 1973. Recipient of the 1997 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, shared with Robert C. Merton. Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at Stanford Graduate School of Business; previously held chairs at MIT Sloan School of Management and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Chief Investment Strategist at Janus Henderson Investors and Chairman of the Board of Economic Advisers at Stamos Partners. Co-author of “Taxes and Business Strategy”, a Pearson MBA textbook now in its fifth edition. Principal and limited partner at Long-Term Capital Management; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Biography Most of modern finance runs on a single equation. Published in 1973 in the Journal of Political Economy, the Black-Scholes formula gave traders and corporations a systematic way to price options and other derivatives. It changed how derivatives are priced and how risk is hedged across global markets. Myron Scholes wrote it with Fischer Black. The work earned Scholes the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Robert C. Merton. The Royal Swedish Academy cited a method that had opened the way for new financial instruments and more efficient risk management. The Nobel was for the formula. The harder lesson came from what happened next. From 1994 to 1998 Scholes was a principal at Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund founded by John Meriwether and staffed with senior academics, Merton among them. Early returns ran above 40 percent a year. After Russia defaulted in 1998, leverage and correlation moved against the fund, and it had to be rescued by a $3.6 billion bailout coordinated by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In the years since, Scholes has refined a more cautious view of markets than his early models implied. He argues that the distribution of risk itself moves over time, and that treating it as stable is the central error of much standard practice. As Chief Investment Strategist at Janus Henderson Investors, he applies this view to real portfolios for institutional clients. He remains the Frank E. Buck Professor of Finance, Emeritus, at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and co-author of “Taxes and Business Strategy”, now in its fifth edition. Key speaking topics Risk and uncertainty in financial markets Derivatives pricing and the Black-Scholes framework Investment decision-making and portfolio construction Asset pricing and capital markets Tax planning and corporate financial strategy Incentives and market behaviour Lessons from financial crises and model failure Ideal for Chief Investment Officers and investment committee members at institutional investors and asset managers Boards and risk committees in banking, insurance and asset management Senior policy advisers and regulators responsible for financial stability Corporate treasurers and finance executives responsible for capital allocation and hedging Audience outcomes A way of thinking about risk that treats distributions as moving rather than fixed A grounded view of what financial models do well and where they break down Sharper questions to ask about leverage and tail risk in their own portfolios The historical context of modern derivatives markets, told by someone who built the underlying framework A view of tax planning as a structural input to corporate and investment decisions, not an afterthought

Why organisations work with Nadine Hani A moderator with genuine financial substance: an MBA from the American University of Beirut and a prior career as a private banking consultant at ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas, before two decades anchoring business news at Al Arabiya. Few hosts on regional stages carry that depth. Interview experience that translates directly to live moderation. She has questioned Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Jamie Dimon, David Rubenstein and Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on Al Arabiya, and has reported from Davos every year since 2008. Working fluency in Arabic and English with native command of the Arab business landscape, well suited to GCC and pan-regional events where audiences switch between languages and references shift between Wall Street and Riyadh. A track record on the stages where serious money meets policy: confirmed moderator at Future Investment Initiative programmes in Riyadh and at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. Biography highlights Senior Business News Presenter at Al Arabiya News Channel; presenter and co-producer of Al Aswaq Al Arabiya. Former business news anchor at CNBC Arabiya, Dubai, and former private banking consultant at ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas in Lebanon. Has interviewed Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Jamie Dimon, David Rubenstein, Robert Zoellick, Michael Eisner and Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Moderator at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting and at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh; reporting from Davos annually since 2008. Weekly columnist on financial and economic affairs for An Nahar, Lebanon. MBA, American University of Beirut; Procter & Gamble scholarship recipient. Biography On the stages where finance ministers and global fund managers take questions, the host is often the weakest link. Most are journalists with an introductory grasp of markets, or industry figures who cannot run a room. Hani is one of the few who can do both. She has presented and co-produced Al Aswaq Al Arabiya on Al Arabiya News Channel since 2005, after joining from CNBC Arabiya in Dubai. She also writes a weekly column on financial and economic affairs for An Nahar in Beirut. The work has put her in the chair opposite Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Jamie Dimon, David Rubenstein, Robert Zoellick and Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Her financial fluency was earned before broadcasting. She worked as a private banking consultant at ABN AMRO and BNP Paribas in Lebanon, advising high-net-worth clients on investment alternatives. She holds an MBA from the American University of Beirut, where she was a Procter & Gamble scholarship recipient. On the international circuit, she has reported from Davos every year since 2008. She regularly moderates at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting and at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, the annual gathering convened by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Both events draw the senior investors and policy figures she has spent two decades interviewing. She works fluently in Arabic and English, and is comfortable on either side of the switch when audiences are mixed. Key speaking topics Global markets and economic outlooks Middle East and GCC economic developments Monetary policy and central banks Financial sector and banking Capital flows and sovereign wealth Geopolitics affecting markets Business journalism and financial media Ideal for Investor conferences and capital markets events that need a chair with the financial fluency to question CIOs, fund managers and finance ministers Pan-Arab and GCC corporate gatherings where bilingual moderation in Arabic and English is required Sovereign-fund and policy-led investment forums, including events run on the Future Investment Initiative or Davos model Awards hosting, after-dinner engagements and televised panels where on-camera poise matters as much as command of the subject Audience outcomes Sharper questions for senior leaders, drawn out by a chair who knows where the financial substance lies Programme flow that makes complex economic content accessible without diluting the detail for specialist attendees Bilingual delivery where audiences move between Arabic and English mid-conversation without the room losing thread Discussion that gets past rehearsed talking points and into the issues senior decision-makers actually want addressed

Why organisations work with Neira Jones Understanding Payments, endorsed by Sir Ron Kalifa (author of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech) and Monzo founder Tom Blomfield, is the closest thing the payments industry has to a standard reference text. She has since extended that body of work with Beyond Payments on decentralised finance and The A-Z of Payments, a 1,600-entry industry glossary. Organisations working with Jones get access to that body of work in a live advisory context, not just a speaker’s perspective. She spent her executive career operating at the scale where payments risk becomes consequential: as Director of Payment Security and Fraud at Barclaycard, she was directly responsible for the security compliance and risk management of approximately 100,000 merchants and third parties. Four years on the PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors and current membership on the UK Payment Systems Regulator Panel give her visibility of how standards are made, not just how they should be interpreted – a position that is genuinely rare in a speaker. She makes a specific and verifiable argument – that fraud prevention and cybersecurity are the same problem managed as two – that most organisations have not yet addressed and which has direct commercial and regulatory consequences. She covers three disciplines – payments mechanics, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance – from a single practitioner perspective. Most organisations rely on separate specialists for each, which produces the fragmented picture Jones helps boards resolve. Biography highlights Author of three Routledge-published books on payments: Understanding Payments (2024), Beyond Payments (2024), and The A-Z of Payments (2025). Understanding Payments is endorsed by Sir Ron Kalifa, author of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech, and Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo and GoCardless Former Director of Payment Security and Fraud, Barclaycard – responsible for security compliance and risk management across approximately 100,000 merchants and third parties Panel Member, UK Payment Systems Regulator Former member, PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors (four years); Fellow of the British Computer Society Inducted into the InfoSecurity Europe Hall of Fame (2011); SC Magazine Information Security Person of the Year (2012); Merchant Payments Ecosystem Acquiring Personality of the Year (2013); Cybersecurity Woman Influencer of the Year (2021) Listed on the Refinitiv Top 100 Influencers in Financial Services, Fintech Weekly 100 Most Influential People in FinTech (2021), and Retail Technology Innovation Hub Top 100 Influencers (2023) Biography At Barclaycard, Neira Jones was Director of Payment Security and Fraud – responsible for security compliance and risk management across approximately 100,000 merchants and third parties. That scale of direct institutional exposure shaped her central argument: payments security and cybersecurity are the same problem. Organisations almost universally manage them as if they were two. Her three Routledge-published books form the most comprehensive public treatment of how payment ecosystems work. Understanding Payments (2024), endorsed by Sir Ron Kalifa, author of the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech, and Tom Blomfield, founder of Monzo, has become the reference text for practitioners and regulators navigating the industry. Beyond Payments (2024) extends that work into decentralised finance and the next generation of payment infrastructure, and The A-Z of Payments (2025) is a 1,600-entry industry glossary. That practitioner depth is backed by formal standards standing. Jones served on the PCI Security Standards Council Board of Advisors for four years and is a Panel Member for the UK Payment Systems Regulator – roles that give her direct visibility of how payment standards develop and how regulatory expectations form. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society. The industry recognition reflects both communities she works across. She is an InfoSecurity Europe Hall of Fame inductee and SC Magazine’s Information Security Person of the Year. She appears on the Refinitiv Top 100 Influencers in Financial Services and the Fintech Weekly 100 Most Influential People in FinTech. Key speaking topics Payments ecosystems and fintech infrastructure Payment security and fraud prevention Cybercrime in financial services Financial regulation and compliance (PSD2, GDPR, AML) Digital trust and open banking Cybersecurity governance for boards Decentralised finance and digital currencies Ideal for Chief Risk Officers and Chief Information Security Officers in financial services and payments organisations Boards and executive committees approving payments infrastructure or fintech partnerships Compliance, legal, and regulatory professionals operating in payments and fintech Fintech investors and M&A teams requiring cybersecurity and payments due diligence expertise Audience outcomes A structural understanding of how payments ecosystems work – across cards, open banking, real-time payments, and digital currencies – and where security and compliance risk sits in each Recognition of why fraud prevention and cybersecurity are typically managed as separate functions when the threat landscape treats them as one – and what that costs Practical clarity on the regulatory environment governing payments, including PSD2, GDPR, and AML frameworks, and how those requirements shape commercial decisions A framework for evaluating fintech partnerships and payments infrastructure decisions against security, fraud, and compliance criteria Greater confidence engaging with regulators, auditors, and technology vendors on payments security questions

Why organisations work with Nick Leeson He is the named primary actor in the most studied operational-risk failure in modern banking history, which means his account of how account 88888 was opened, fed and hidden carries weight no consultant can replicate. He breaks the polite fiction that rogue trading is rare. Subsequent losses at Allied Irish, Societe Generale, UBS and others have proved his core point that the conditions which produced Barings are still live in trading-floor and middle-office design. His 2023 appointment to Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit puts him on the investigator side of financial misconduct, giving compliance and audit audiences a rare voice that has worked both sides of the control line. He addresses the human variables that risk frameworks assume away: pressure, ego, fear of admitting a small loss, and the speed at which a contained problem becomes terminal. For boards and senior leaders, he is the named cautionary case, sitting in the room and answering questions, rather than a slide in an audit deck. Biography highlights Caused the £827m collapse of Barings Bank in February 1995 through unauthorised futures and options trades booked to error account 88888 on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. Convicted in Singapore and held at Changi Prison from December 1995 until July 1999. Author of Rogue Trader (1996) and co-author of Back from the Brink: Coping with Stress (2005, with psychologist Ivan Tyrrell). Subject of the 1999 film Rogue Trader, starring Ewan McGregor, with rights optioned by Sir David Frost. CEO of Galway United Football Club, 2007 to 2011. Investigator at Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, the London corporate intelligence firm, since 2023, working financial misconduct cases for investors. Biography A 25-year-old derivatives trader on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange held the positions of chief trader and head of settlements at the same time, and used that conflict to bury an initial £20,000 error inside an account numbered 88888. Three years later, that account held £827m of concealed losses, and Barings, the bank that had financed the Louisiana Purchase, was insolvent. The mechanics of that failure remain the most cited operational-risk case study in financial services. The point of hearing it directly from Leeson is not the drama. It is the precision. He can describe the specific control breaches, the cultural signals that allowed them, and the day-by-day choices that kept the losses hidden, including the short straddle on the Nikkei placed the day before the Kobe earthquake of 17 January 1995. Risk and compliance teams use that detail to test their own supervisory architecture. The post-Barings career adds the second half of the argument. Six and a half years in Changi, a colon cancer diagnosis served out in prison, a psychology degree, the CEO seat at Galway United, and the books Rogue Trader and Back from the Brink with Ivan Tyrrell. The last of those titles is the one risk professionals tend to underestimate. Pressure, isolation and the fear of admitting a contained loss are the human inputs that no governance framework prices correctly. In 2023 Leeson joined Red Mist Market Enforcement Unit, the London corporate intelligence firm that investigates financial misconduct on behalf of wronged investors. For audiences in banking, insurance and regulated industries, that role is the salient point: the man who once defeated the controls is now being hired to detect the people doing it next. Key speaking topics Operational risk and rogue trading Compliance, supervision and the limits of policy Corporate governance and board oversight of trading risk Internal controls, segregation of duties and concealment behaviour Organisational culture in high-pressure environments Resilience, stress and decision-making under pressure Financial crime detection and investigation Ideal for Boards, audit committees and risk committees in banking, asset management and insurance Chief risk officers, compliance heads, internal audit leads and operational risk teams Regulators, supervisors and financial crime units Senior leaders in any business with material market, trading or treasury exposure Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how concealment actually works inside a trading operation, beyond the textbook description Specific signals that supervisors, risk teams and auditors should treat as warnings rather than reassurance A clearer view of the human conditions, pressure, ego, fear, that turn a recoverable error into a terminal loss A sharpened sense of where a control framework on paper diverges from the behaviour on the desk Renewed attention to segregation of duties, error-account governance and exception handling

Why organisations work with Ning Zhu A specific thesis on China, not a country briefing. China’s Guaranteed Bubble argues that implicit state support is the load-bearing feature of Chinese growth, and the source of its systemic risk. Audiences leave with a frame they can actually use. One of the few China-economy voices with peer-reviewed standing in the Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies, which means his macro reading is built on disciplined empirical work, not commentary. Operating experience inside Lehman Brothers and Nomura in Hong Kong, so the talk is calibrated to how capital allocators and quantitative desks actually think, not to a classroom audience. Behavioural finance fluency that translates into how Chinese retail investors, regulators and state-owned enterprises behave under pressure. This is rare combined with macro authority on the same market. Faculty Fellow status at Yale’s International Center for Finance and senior faculty roles at SAIF and Tsinghua, which gives him standing across Chinese policy circles and Western financial institutions in equal measure. Biography highlights Deputy Dean and Professor of Finance, Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Faculty Fellow, Yale University International Center for Finance. Author of China’s Guaranteed Bubble (McGraw-Hill), The Investors’ Enemy and The Investors’ Friend. Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Book Award, 2018. Named among Elsevier’s “China’s Most Cited Scholars,” 2022. Former Senior Executive at Lehman Brothers and Nomura Securities, Hong Kong, leading quantitative and portfolio advisory teams. Former tenured Professor of Finance at the University of California (Davis) and Chair Professor at Tsinghua University. Biography China’s economy does not behave like a textbook market. Implicit state guarantees underpin large parts of its credit system, shaping how banks lend, how households save, and how risk migrates into shadow channels. China’s Guaranteed Bubble, published by McGraw-Hill, sets out that argument in detail and is the work that defines Ning Zhu’s public profile. Zhu sits at the intersection of academic finance and operating practice. He is Deputy Dean and Professor of Finance at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a Faculty Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance. His peer-reviewed work has appeared in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies and Management Science, with a particular focus on behavioural finance and Chinese capital markets. Before returning to academia full-time, he was a Senior Executive at Lehman Brothers and then Nomura in Hong Kong, where he led quantitative strategy and portfolio advisory teams. That period gives his China commentary a useful directness: he has sat on the desk that has to act on the analysis, not only write it. He has also held tenured and chair appointments at the University of California, Davis and Tsinghua University. His work has been recognised with the Sun Yefang Financial Innovation Book Award, considered one of the highest honours in Chinese economics, and inclusion on Elsevier’s list of China’s most cited scholars. For boards and investors, the value is the combination: a researcher whose behavioural finance training shows him how investors and regulators actually behave, applied to the Chinese system he has studied and worked in for two decades. Key speaking topics China’s macroeconomy and financial system Implicit state guarantees and systemic risk Behavioural finance Shadow banking and credit risk in China Global financial order and capital flows Chinese investor and household behaviour Fiscal sustainability and financial reform Ideal for Boards, CFOs and CIOs with material China exposure assessing systemic risk Investment committees, asset managers and family offices allocating to or away from Chinese assets Banking and financial services leadership teams shaping China strategy Policy and regulatory audiences working on cross-border capital and financial reform Audience outcomes A working model for how implicit state guarantees shape Chinese credit, equity and property markets A clearer view of where systemic risk actually sits inside China’s shadow banking and SOE structures A behavioural finance lens applied to Chinese retail investors and institutional decision-makers A more disciplined reading of Chinese policy signals and what they imply for capital allocation Specific questions a board or investment committee should be asking about its China exposure

Why organisations work with Omar Christidis He has spent a decade mapping the MENA digital economy at a depth no global consultancy replicates: 30+ Arabnet conferences, 15+ original research reports and direct visibility into more than 650 regional startups. He sits inside the deal flow as Partner and Board Member at Flat6Labs Beirut, so his read on what is actually getting funded in the region is operational, not commentary. His advisory work with the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Foresights Program and the Aspen Institute UK gives him a policy-grade frame on technology that translates well to boards weighing geopolitical exposure alongside digital strategy. He is one of the few speakers who can hold a serious technology conversation in both English and Arabic for a regional C-suite audience, with the Yale and Booz analytical pedigree to back it up. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Arabnet, the MENA-focused digital events, media and research company, founded in Beirut in 2009. Partner and Board Member, Flat6Labs Beirut, a $20m accelerator with 33 investments in Lebanese startups. Advisory Board Member, Strategic Foresights Program, Middle East Institute, Washington DC. Faculty Member and Moderator, Aspen Institute UK. BA and MBA, Yale University; former consultant at Booz & Co. MENA. Named Global Finance Magazine Top Innovator for the Middle East (2018); featured in Forbes, CNN, CNBC Arabia and Sky News Arabia. Biography The MENA digital economy is no longer an emerging-market footnote. Over the past decade it has produced unicorns, regulatory frameworks for fintech and e-commerce, and a regional venture industry that now writes cheques large enough to keep founders at home. Few people have shaped that shift more practically than the founder of Arabnet. Arabnet was launched in Beirut in 2009, after Omar Christidis left a role in private wealth management in New York during the financial crisis and a stint at Booz & Co. in the MENA. The company has since organised more than thirty regional tech conferences, published over fifteen original research reports on the Arab digital ecosystem, and supported 650+ startups, becoming the standing forum where founders, corporates and investors meet. His credibility is built on access, not opinion. As Partner and Board Member at Flat6Labs Beirut, a $20m accelerator with 33 Lebanese investments, he sees what is being funded. As an Advisory Board Member of the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Foresights Program in Washington and a Faculty Member at Aspen Institute UK, he sees how regional technology decisions are being read in policy circles. The result is a speaker who can tell a Gulf board what the next wave of digital challengers actually looks like, where capital is moving, and which corporate innovation playbooks travel and which do not. Global Finance Magazine named him Top Innovator for the Middle East in 2018; the World Economic Forum named Arabnet a Top 100 Arab World Startup the year before. Key speaking topics MENA digital economy and startup ecosystem Corporate innovation strategy Digital disruption and emerging business models Tech investment and venture capital in the Arab world Future of media and advertising Fourth industrial revolution Banking and fintech in the Middle East Ideal for Boards and C-suites of regional incumbents in banking, telco, media and retail facing digital challengers Global corporates entering or scaling in MENA who need a regional read on customer behaviour and competitive risk Investors, family offices and sovereign funds allocating to MENA technology and venture Government and policy audiences shaping digital, fintech and innovation regulation in the region Audience outcomes A current, named view of where MENA digital capital is flowing and which sub-sectors are concentrating A working frame for distinguishing genuine regional disruptors from imported business models that will not survive local conditions Specific examples of how incumbents in banking, retail and media have responded to digital challengers in MENA, and what worked A sharper read on how Gulf and Levant regulators are shaping the operating environment for technology businesses

Why organisations work with Paul Lewis He is the voice UK consumers associate with personal-finance scrutiny. For a pensions provider, bank or platform, putting him in front of customers, advisers or regulators is borrowing the most trusted editorial brand in retail finance. Three decades inside Money Box and Money Box Live means he reads regulatory shifts, scam patterns and adviser conduct from the perspective of the person being affected, not the firm being affected. He is a working broadcaster, not a retired one. Panels, fireside conversations and after-dinner sessions land in the same register listeners hear on Radio 4 every Saturday lunchtime. His record on consumer protection is recognised by the industry itself. The Association of British Insurers gave him a lifetime achievement award; the Association of Investment Companies named him Best Broadcast Journalist; the University of Essex awarded an honorary doctorate citing journalism in defence of consumers. He brings a journalist’s discipline on questions: pension providers, life companies, asset managers and intermediaries are interrogated on the substance their customers actually feel. Biography highlights Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Money Box and Money Box Live, the BBC’s flagship personal-finance programmes, since 2000. Author of Money Box: Your Toolkit for Balancing Your Budget, Growing Your Bank Balance and Living a Better Financial Life, published by Penguin Random House. Monthly Money Works columnist for Saga Magazine and longstanding columnist for Money Marketing. Lifetime achievement award, Association of British Insurers, 2006. Best Broadcast Journalist, Association of Investment Companies, 2011. Multiple Headline Money Awards Broadcast Journalist of the Year, including 2013. Honorary doctorate, University of Essex, 2013, for journalism defending consumers. Biography The pension freedoms reforms of 2015, the long pull of auto-enrolment, scam epidemics targeting older savers and the slow remediation of bad advice have made retail finance one of the most contested editorial territories in Britain. Money Box on BBC Radio 4 is where the issues land first, and Paul Lewis has been the programme’s presenter since September 2000. Three decades of independent journalism sit behind that chair. Lewis began reporting on personal finance in the 1980s and joined Money Box in the 1990s before returning to present it. He writes the monthly Money Works column for Saga Magazine, contributes to Money Marketing, and remains a regular voice on BBC Breakfast, Today, Woman’s Hour and You and Yours when consumer-finance stories break. The industry has recognised the work on its own terms. The Association of British Insurers gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2006. The Association of Investment Companies named him Best Broadcast Journalist in 2011. The University of Essex awarded an honorary doctorate in 2013, citing his journalism in defence of consumers. He is also the author of Money Box, published by Penguin Random House, a practical handbook drawn from years of listener questions on tax, pensions, debt, property and investing. For financial services audiences, the commercial value is editorial credibility most senior leaders cannot manufacture in-house. When Lewis questions a chief executive on a panel, or chairs a regulatory roundtable, or speaks after dinner to a firm’s adviser network, he carries the listening relationship he has built with retail savers into the room. Key speaking topics Personal finance and consumer money Pensions, retirement income and pension scams Personal taxation and tax policy Financial services regulation and conduct Fraud, scams and consumer protection Banking and savings Financial journalism and the consumer voice Ideal for Financial services firms: banks, insurers, life and pensions providers, asset managers, platforms. IFA networks, wealth managers and advice firms commissioning panels, conferences or adviser events. Regulators, trade bodies and consumer organisations working on retail conduct, scams or pension policy. Boards and senior leadership teams in retail-facing financial services who want a journalist’s pressure-test on customer experience. Audience outcomes A clearer read on what retail customers actually hear, miss and mistrust about pensions, tax and savings. Concrete recent cases of scams, mis-selling and conduct failure, drawn from Money Box reporting. A working journalist’s framing of how regulatory change lands with consumers, not with compliance teams. A view of the trust gap between financial services and the public, and where it can realistically be closed.

Why organisations work with Raghuram Rajan The Fault Lines framework – winner of the 2010 FT-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year – gives organisations a specific, named diagnostic for distinguishing structural economic imbalance from cyclical volatility. That is a different tool from scenario planning or macroeconomic outlook, and more useful at board level. He is the only prominent economist to have publicly and formally predicted the 2008 financial crisis in advance – at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium in 2005 – and been dismissed at the time. That track record is a credential no other economics speaker holds. He governed a major central bank through a period of acute currency stress and capital flight, giving senior audiences access to decision-making insight from inside a monetary authority under pressure – not retrospective academic analysis of one. His Third Pillar argument – that markets and states, operating without healthy communities, produce the political backlash that now defines operating risk for global organisations – provides a structural explanation for the instability that most business risk frameworks treat as noise. As Chairman of the Group of Thirty, the senior body that shapes global monetary and financial policy thinking, his analysis is current and policy-facing, not retrospective. Biography highlights Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (2013–2016); Vice-Chairman, Board of the Bank for International Settlements (2015–2016) Chief Economist and Director of Research, International Monetary Fund (2003–2006) Presented research at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium in 2005 warning of structural financial risk – widely recognised as a prescient forecast of the 2008 global financial crisis Author of Fault Lines (FT-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year, 2010) and The Third Pillar (shortlisted, FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, 2019); co-author of Breaking the Mould (Princeton University Press, 2024) Chairman, Group of Thirty; Chairman, Per Jacobsson Foundation; Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fischer Black Prize, American Finance Association (inaugural, 2003); Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics (2013); Euromoney Central Banker of the Year (2014); Banker Magazine Central Banker of the Year (2016) Regular contributor to Project Syndicate on global economic and monetary policy Biography Financial crises don’t arrive without signals – they arrive without being believed. In 2005, at the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole symposium, Rajan presented research identifying structural risks in the financial system that could, if unaddressed, precipitate a major crisis. The then-US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers dismissed the analysis publicly. Three years later, the 2008 financial crisis unfolded. That episode anchors Rajan’s central argument, developed in Fault Lines – the 2010 FT-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year – that global financial crises are rooted in structural political and economic imbalances, not isolated market failures. He applied this framework at the level of actual policy: as Chief Economist at the IMF from 2003 to 2006, shaping global economic analysis across a period of significant financial stress; and as the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 2013 to 2016, managing monetary policy through currency pressure and capital outflows that tested emerging market resilience. His 2019 book The Third Pillar, shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, extends the argument into political economy. The conventional debate between markets and the state, Rajan contends, ignores the community as a third and equally necessary foundation of economic stability. When that pillar erodes – as globalisation concentrates gains and disperses costs – the political backlash follows. That dynamic now constitutes a primary operating risk for organisations across every sector. As Chairman of the Group of Thirty, a regular contributor to Project Syndicate, and co-author of Breaking the Mould (Princeton University Press, 2024) – which proposes a new economic development path for India as the traditional manufacturing-led growth model becomes less viable – Rajan continues to work at the intersection of economic analysis and practical policy, where the consequences of getting the diagnosis wrong are most clearly visible. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomics and financial stability Structural risk and the conditions that precede financial crises Central banking and monetary policy Emerging markets and economic development Political economy: globalisation, populism, and community India’s economic trajectory and structural reform ESG, corporate disclosure, and responsible capitalism Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams at multinational organisations assessing macroeconomic and geopolitical risk Senior leadership in financial services – banking, asset management, insurance, and central banking institutions Chief strategy officers and chief risk officers stress-testing global market assumptions Government bodies, policy forums, and international economic organisations Audience outcomes A specific framework for reading structural fault lines in the global economy, distinct from standard macroeconomic forecasting Grounded understanding of how central banks weigh political pressure against policy mandates – from someone who managed that tension in office A clearer account of why globalisation generates political backlash, and what that means for organisations operating across different political environments Context for emerging market risk – particularly India – built on policy experience rather than external analysis A more rigorous basis for stress-testing the macroeconomic assumptions embedded in corporate strategy and investment decisions

Why organisations work with Rebecca Harding A working command of the machinery of trade finance and trade data, built through founding Coriolis Technologies and serving as Chief Economist at UK Finance, that few geopolitics speakers can match. The author of The World at Economic War, selected by Martin Wolf in his Financial Times best economics books of 2025, with a defined argument about how the market system itself has become a tool of great-power conflict. A current operating role: CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group, which puts her inside the institutions building the new trade and security architecture. Equally credible in a C-suite keynote, a regulator-level workshop, or a wargaming session, having designed formats for finance, defence and policy audiences. A specific point of view on sustainable trade and digitalisation, grounded in advisory work with banks, corporates and parliamentary committees rather than in commentary alone. Biography highlights CEO, Centre for Economic Security, leading research on economic threats, supply chain resilience and the weaponisation of trade. Chief Economic Adviser, Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group. Founder and former CEO of Coriolis Technologies, a trade data and analytics business serving the trade finance sector, acquired by TradeSun. Author of The World at Economic War (2025) and co-author of The Weaponization of Trade (2017), published by London Publishing Partnership. Former Chief Economist at UK Finance, Chief Economist at the Work Foundation, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. Regular contributor to BBC, Bloomberg, Sky News, CNBC, BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio on trade and economic security. Biography Trade is now a security question. Sanctions regimes, export controls, the digitalisation of payments and the contest over critical minerals have collapsed the old boundary between commercial trade policy and national security. Boards and finance ministries are trying to make capital, supplier and counterparty decisions inside a system whose rules are being rewritten in real time. Rebecca Harding’s career has been built on this seam. She is CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank Development Group, two institutions designed for exactly this terrain. Earlier she founded Coriolis Technologies, a trade data and analytics business that gave the trade finance sector a clearer view of risk in cross-border flows, and served as Chief Economist at UK Finance, Chief Economist at the Work Foundation, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. Her argument is set out in The World at Economic War: How to Rebuild Security in a Weaponized Global Economy, published in 2025 and selected by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times among his best economics books of the year. The thesis, developed from her earlier book The Weaponization of Trade with Jack Harding, is that the market system itself has become a means of great-power competition, and that defence, finance and trade can no longer be governed as separate domains. For senior audiences this matters because the operational consequences are concrete. They show up in supplier dependencies, in sanctions exposure, in the cost and direction of trade finance, and in where capital can credibly be deployed for the next decade. Harding works through those questions with banks, corporates, regulators and parliamentary committees, and her keynotes, panels and wargaming sessions are designed to leave decision-makers with a clearer read of what economic security requires of them. Key speaking topics Economic security and the weaponisation of trade Geopolitics and geoeconomics Trade finance and supply chain finance Supply chain resilience and reshoring Digital and sustainable trade Defence and security finance Macroeconomic outlook and global markets Ideal for Boards and executive committees of banks, insurers and large corporates with cross-border exposure Heads of trade finance, treasury, supply chain and procurement Policy, regulatory and public affairs leaders working on sanctions, export controls and economic security Defence, security and resilience investors and the institutions financing them Audience outcomes A clearer working definition of economic security and what it asks of capital allocation, supplier strategy and trade finance A read on how sanctions, export controls and reshoring are reshaping cross-border risk for specific sectors A framework for separating geopolitical noise from the structural shifts that change long-range plans A view of where digital and sustainable trade infrastructure is heading, and the implications for banks and corporates Questions and pressure tests that a leadership team can take straight into its strategy and risk discussions

Why organisations work with Robert C. Merton Co-developer of the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model. The framework on which the modern derivatives market is priced and risk-managed; few speakers in capital markets can credibly claim authorship of the underlying theory. Architect of Managed DC at Dimensional, a retirement-funding system that measures success in lifetime income. The answer to the question every pension board now confronts. 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The credential carries weight with regulators, central banks, and sovereign wealth funds in a way few academic credentials do. Two frameworks finance practitioners use daily, continuous-time finance and Functional and Structural Finance, were built by him. Audiences engage with the original thinking from the source. Biography highlights Awarded the 1997 Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Myron Scholes for a new method to value derivatives. School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan; University Professor Emeritus at Harvard. Resident Scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors and creator of Managed DC, an integrated retirement-funding system used as the operational basis for income-driven pension design. Past President of the American Finance Association, member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Author of Continuous-Time Finance and co-author of Principles of Finance (Cambridge University Press) and The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective. Author of “The Crisis in Retirement Planning” (Harvard Business Review, 2014), the article that reframed pension success around lifetime income rather than asset accumulation. Biography Most defined-contribution pension plans measure success by the size of the asset pool. The members measure it by the income that pool will produce. That gap defines a generation of retirement policy debate. The framework for closing it came largely from Robert C. Merton. His 2014 Harvard Business Review article “The Crisis in Retirement Planning” set out the case for a liability-driven investment strategy that targets retirement income directly. The size of the pot at retirement is the wrong success measure. As Resident Scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors, he built the operating version of that argument: Managed DC, a retirement-funding system designed to deliver guaranteed lifetime income. The same intellectual move, taking financial theory and pushing it into the institutional plumbing of how markets and pensions actually work, runs through his career. With Fischer Black and Myron Scholes he co-developed the Black-Scholes-Merton options pricing model, the framework that made modern derivatives markets functional. He shared the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Scholes for that work. With Zvi Bodie he developed Functional and Structural Finance, a framework regulators and finance ministries use to analyse financial systems by their economic functions. He is School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance at MIT Sloan and University Professor Emeritus at Harvard. He is past President of the American Finance Association, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Black-Scholes-Merton model still prices most of the world’s traded options. The frameworks senior finance audiences work inside are, in a literal sense, his. Key speaking topics Derivatives valuation and modern risk management Continuous-time finance Retirement systems and lifetime income design Functional and Structural Finance Capital markets and financial innovation Macro-financial systemic risk Lifecycle investing and portfolio choice Pension reform and DB-to-DC transition Ideal for Pension trustees, defined-contribution plan sponsors, and the asset managers building DC default solutions Boards and CFOs of banks, insurers, and asset managers with material exposure to derivatives and risk-transfer markets Central banks, regulators, and finance ministries working on systemic risk and pension policy Chief investment officers and treasury teams at sovereign wealth funds and large institutional investors Audience outcomes Why retirement income is the right measure of success for any DC pension system, and the design implications for trustees and sponsors The economic logic underneath derivatives and risk-transfer markets, in language that lets a senior non-quant push back on a hedging proposal Functional and Structural Finance as a tool for analysing systemic risk, with examples of how regulators and finance ministries are applying it The case for liability-driven investment in pension and insurance balance sheets, and how it changes asset allocation decisions

Why organisations work with Robert Mazur Twenty-seven years across IRS Criminal Investigation, US Customs and the DEA gives him a breadth of federal financial-crime experience that is rare in the speaker circuit and specifically relevant to banking and regulated audiences. Operation C-Chase, his two-year undercover infiltration of Pablo Escobar’s money-laundering network and BCCI, one of the largest private banks in the world at the time, is one of the most studied financial-crime cases in history, and it is his case to tell. The Infiltrator, his New York Times bestseller, was adapted into a 2016 feature film starring Bryan Cranston, which gives audiences a shared cultural reference point before the session begins. His court certification as a money-laundering expert in the US and Canada means his material holds up in front of compliance, legal and risk audiences who will test it against their own casework. He combines war-story delivery with technical specificity, which is useful for organisations that need to energise a compliance programme without sacrificing the substance. Biography highlights Former US federal agent, 27-year career across IRS Criminal Investigation, US Customs Service and DEA Led Operation C-Chase, the mid-1980s undercover investigation of Pablo Escobar’s money-laundering network and BCCI Undercover alias «Robert Musella» for two years inside a $20 billion global banking fraud Court-certified money-laundering expert in the United States and Canada Author of The Infiltrator, New York Times bestseller, adapted into a 2016 feature film starring Bryan Cranston Author of second memoir The Betrayal Biography The Bank of Credit and Commerce International had $20 billion in assets and operations across more than 70 countries when Robert Mazur, posing as New Jersey businessman «Robert Musella», spent two years inside its money-laundering operations. Operation C-Chase, the US government infiltration he led, ultimately produced one of the most consequential financial-crime prosecutions of the twentieth century and the collapse of BCCI itself. The same investigation reached Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, which was using the bank to move drug proceeds through the global financial system. His route to that case was a 27-year federal career that ran through IRS Criminal Investigation, the US Customs Service and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Mazur is court-certified as a money-laundering expert in both the United States and Canada, which gives his analysis the standing to be cited in compliance programmes rather than simply admired in a keynote. The public record of the work is extensive. The Infiltrator, his bestselling memoir, was adapted into the 2016 feature film of the same name starring Bryan Cranston. His second memoir, The Betrayal, continues the inside account of how undercover operations against narcotics and money launderers are actually run, and where institutional complicity makes them possible. For global banks, compliance functions, regulators, law-enforcement audiences and corporate risk teams, the value proposition is direct. Mazur does not speak about financial crime; he speaks as someone whose work closed one of the largest laundering operations in financial history. The sessions combine the specific mechanics of how criminal networks move money with a clear-eyed view of what banks consistently fail to catch, and why. Key speaking topics Money laundering and the anatomy of financial crime Undercover investigations and infiltration methodology Banking compliance, AML and the weaknesses professional launderers exploit Drug cartels, organised crime and the global financial system Lessons from the BCCI and Pablo Escobar investigations Risk, governance and executive accountability for financial crime Ideal for Global banks, payment firms and fintech leadership teams strengthening financial-crime programmes Compliance, risk, audit and governance functions running internal training or board briefings Financial services regulators, supervisors and law-enforcement audiences Corporate risk leadership teams and boards exposed to financial-crime reputational risk Audience outcomes A detailed, first-hand view of how professional money launderers assess and exploit banking institutions Specific mechanisms used in the BCCI and Pablo Escobar cases, framed for modern compliance audiences A clearer read of where current AML and KYC approaches still fall short Practical prompts for internal programme design drawn from undercover investigative experience A reference point in The Infiltrator that leadership teams can share with wider compliance staff