Globale Wirtschaft und Märkte

Why organisations work with Enda Kenny He ran a national economy through its deepest post-war crisis and handed it over as the fastest-growing in the EU, with unemployment below 5 percent and full market access restored. He chaired the Council of the European Union during the 960 billion euro Multiannual Financial Framework negotiation, which gives him a working view of how Brussels, the Parliament, and national capitals actually reach agreement. He called and won the 2015 marriage equality referendum, the first national vote of its kind anywhere, and built the Citizens’ Assembly model that other democracies now study. He sits inside the Global Leadership Foundation alongside former heads of state and chairs the Global Advisory Council of VentureWave Capital, so his current reading of Europe is informed by active advisory work rather than memoir. Biography highlights Taoiseach of Ireland, March 2011 to June 2017; first Fine Gael Taoiseach in history to be re-elected. Leader of Fine Gael, 2002 to 2017, the longest tenure of any leader in the party. Chaired the Council of the European Union during Ireland’s 2013 Presidency, delivering agreement on the 960 billion euro Multiannual Financial Framework, Erasmus+, and a negotiating mandate for TTIP. Elected to Dail Eireann at age 24 in 1975, re-elected in every subsequent general election until his retirement in 2020. Chair of the Global Advisory Council of VentureWave Capital and its Impact Ireland fund. Member of the Global Leadership Foundation; recipient of the Golden Victoria European of the Year (2012) and the inaugural Trinity European Laureate Award (2025). Biography Ireland entered 2011 in an EU-IMF assistance programme with unemployment above 15 percent and sovereign borrowing rates near distressed levels. Six years later the country was the fastest-growing economy in the European Union, with rates on ten-year borrowing at zero and unemployment under 5 percent. Enda Kenny was Taoiseach for all of it. He led Fine Gael for fifteen years, the longest tenure in the party’s history, and became the first Fine Gael Taoiseach to win re-election. The substance of the government’s work was fiscal stabilisation, bank restructuring, and the orderly exit from the troika programme; the political work was holding a coalition together while doing it. In 2013 he chaired the Council of the European Union during Ireland’s Presidency, brokering the 960 billion euro Multiannual Financial Framework, the Erasmus+ settlement, a negotiating mandate for TTIP, and reforms of the Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies. The same government called the 2015 marriage equality referendum, the first national vote anywhere to legalise same-sex marriage, and established the Citizens’ Assembly as a deliberative route for constitutional questions. He now chairs the Global Advisory Council of VentureWave Capital and its Impact Ireland fund, sits within the Global Leadership Foundation alongside other former heads of state, and in 2025 received the inaugural Trinity European Laureate Award from Trinity College Dublin and Teneo for his contribution to European ideals. Key speaking topics European Union governance and the politics of the single market Economic recovery and fiscal stabilisation after crisis Political leadership in coalition and minority government Sovereign market confidence and investor relations Constitutional reform and citizen deliberation Ireland, the UK, and the post-Brexit settlement Impact investment and national economic strategy Ideal for Boards and executive committees of firms with material European exposure Financial services, asset managers, and sovereign-facing investors Policy, regulatory, and public affairs conferences focused on Europe CEO forums and leadership programmes addressing crisis and recovery Audience outcomes A working account of how a national government executes fiscal consolidation without losing the coalition or the electorate A first-hand read on how Brussels, the European Parliament, and national capitals actually negotiate multi-year budgets A clear view of the political mechanics behind the 2015 marriage equality vote and the Citizens’ Assembly model A sharper sense of where Ireland and the wider EU sit in the transatlantic relationship after Brexit Direct reflections on what holds under pressure when a country is being asked to take painful decisions quickly

Why organisations work with Enrico Letta He authored the defining European policy document of the decade. The Letta Report, commissioned by the European Council in 2024, now frames every serious conversation in Brussels on capital markets, industrial strategy, and the Savings and Investments Union. He has run a G7 government. Leaders in a room with him get a view of European decision-making from inside the Council chamber, not from a commentator’s distance. He sits at the centre of the institutional network that matters. President of the Jacques Delors Institute, Dean at IE University, former Dean at Sciences Po: the same network that produces the people who will implement what he has proposed. He brings a defensible point of view on the one question boards cannot answer on their own. What European reform will actually ship, and what that means for capital allocation, M&A strategy, and regulatory exposure in the next three years. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Italy, April 2013 to February 2014, leading a national unity coalition. Author of “Much More Than a Market,” the April 2024 report to the European Council on the future of the EU Single Market. Dean, IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs, IE University, Madrid. President, Jacques Delors Institute, Paris, since 2016. Former Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, 2015 to 2021. Commander of the French Legion of Honour; Gran Cruz of the Order of Civil Merit, Kingdom of Spain. Biography The Letta Report landed on the European Council’s desk in April 2024 and changed the terms of the argument. Commissioned by EU heads of state and written by a former Prime Minister of Italy, “Much More Than a Market” proposed a Savings and Investments Union, a Fifth Freedom for research and innovation, and a Single Market designed for scale rather than fragmentation. It is now the reference document for every serious policy file in Brussels touching capital markets, industrial strategy, and competitiveness. Enrico Letta ran a G7 government through one of the most difficult passages in recent Italian politics, serving as Prime Minister from April 2013 to February 2014 at the head of a national unity coalition. Before the premiership he held portfolios for European Affairs and for Industry, Commerce and Crafts, and sat in the Chamber of Deputies across multiple terms. The experience gives him a particular kind of authority: he has written policy and he has had to deliver it against a political calendar. He now anchors the European institutional network from the inside. As Dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs at IE University, Madrid, and as President of the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris since 2016, Letta works at the intersection of policy formation and executive education. He was Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po from 2015 to 2021 and served as President of APSIA, the Washington-based association of professional schools of international affairs. The recognition is from the institutions that matter to the argument. France made him a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 2017. Spain awarded him the Gran Cruz of the Order of Civil Merit. He chairs the Diplomatic Forum of GESDA in Geneva and speaks in English, French, and Italian. For a board trying to understand where European policy is going, few speakers can say, with evidence, that they have written the document everyone in the room will be working from. Key speaking topics European Union policy and strategic direction The future of the EU Single Market Capital markets, the Savings and Investments Union, and European competitiveness European industrial strategy in a US and China context Transatlantic relations and geopolitical positioning for European business Coalition government and political decision-making at the national level Ideal for CEOs, CFOs, and boards of multinationals with material EU exposure weighing capital allocation against regulatory direction. Heads of European public affairs, government relations, and regulatory strategy at financial institutions, industrial groups, and technology platforms. Investment committees, asset managers, and private equity leadership teams tracking the Savings and Investments Union and capital markets reform. University, think-tank, and policy audiences working on European integration and transatlantic relations. Audience outcomes A specific read on which elements of the Letta Report are likely to move through the Council and Parliament, and on what timeline. A clearer view of how European industrial strategy is repositioning against US and Chinese competition, and what that implies for cross-border M&A and supply chain strategy. A sharper grasp of the political mechanics inside the European Council, from someone who has sat at that table as a head of government. A framework for thinking about European competitiveness that goes beyond the usual binary of Brussels versus national capitals.

Why organisations work with Eric Maskin He is one of three economists who built the field that now underpins auction design, procurement, and market regulation across the developed world. Few speakers can claim intellectual authorship of a discipline their audience already uses. His frameworks answer a concrete question boards wrestle with: when an incentive system fails, is the fault in execution, in the people, or in the design itself? Maskin’s work gives a disciplined way to tell the difference. On voting and collective decision rules, his recent work with Amartya Sen and Edward Foley offers leaders a sharper vocabulary for how groups should choose, directly relevant to governance, board process, and platform moderation. He brings the Harvard chair, the Nobel, and the former presidency of the Econometric Society, but speaks to business audiences in the register of a colleague reasoning through a problem, not a laureate delivering a lecture. Biography highlights 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Leonid Hurwicz and Roger Myerson, for the foundations of mechanism design theory. Adams University Professor and Professor of Economics and Mathematics at Harvard University. Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2000 to 2011. Past President of the Econometric Society and the Game Theory Society. Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1984 to 1990. Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences; holder of 18 honorary doctorates. Biography Mechanism design is the branch of economics that asks a practical question: if you want a specific outcome from a group of people with different information and different interests, what rules will produce it? The Royal Swedish Academy cited that question when it awarded the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Leonid Hurwicz, Roger Myerson, and Eric Maskin. Maskin’s contribution, often called Maskin monotonicity, set the conditions under which a social goal can actually be implemented through the behaviour of self-interested agents. The theory now sits behind spectrum auctions, procurement design, matching markets, and a large share of modern regulatory economics. His institutional record follows the work. He taught at MIT from 1977 to 1984, at Harvard from 1985 to 2000, and held the Albert O. Hirschman chair at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton until 2012, when Harvard named him Adams University Professor. He edited the Quarterly Journal of Economics for six years and served as President of both the Econometric Society and the Game Theory Society. More recent work has turned to voting. With Amartya Sen in The New York Review of Books, and in subsequent papers with Edward Foley, Maskin has argued for Condorcet-style rules over plurality and ranked-choice systems on the grounds that they track majority preference more faithfully. For boards, regulators, and platform operators, the underlying question is the same as the one that won the Nobel: which rule produces the outcome the institution actually wants. Key speaking topics Mechanism design and the economics of incentives Auction design and market allocation Regulation, competition policy, and market power Voting rules and collective decision systems Governance and institutional design Innovation, patents, and intellectual property Ideal for Boards and executive committees redesigning incentive, compensation, or partnership structures Regulators, central banks, and policy leaders working on auctions, procurement, or market oversight Platform operators and market-makers setting allocation, pricing, or moderation rules Senior economics and strategy audiences at investor conferences and leadership summits Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for diagnosing when an incentive failure is a design problem, not a people problem Concrete examples of how auction and market-design choices change who wins and what is produced A sharper view of voting and decision rules for governance, board process, and group choice Direct exposure to the reasoning of one of the architects of modern economic theory, applied to questions leaders actually face

Why organisations work with Ernesto Zedillo He has run a major economy through a currency crisis and a peaceful democratic transition, and can speak to macroeconomic decision-making with first-hand authority rather than commentary. He directs Yale’s globalization programme, which gives his reading of trade policy, capital markets and multilateral institutions an analytical base that short-horizon geopolitical speakers cannot match. His service on The Elders, the Group of Thirty and the Global Commission on Drug Policy puts him inside the rooms where international policy is actually debated, not outside them. Twenty years of independent directorships at Citigroup, Alcoa and Procter and Gamble mean he understands how boards translate geopolitical risk into capital allocation, and speaks to corporate audiences in their terms. He is the architect of Progresa, the conditional cash-transfer model later adopted from Brazil to New York City, which gives him a credible track record on social policy design as well as macro policy. Biography highlights President of Mexico, 1994 to 2000, following senior roles as Secretary of Education, Secretary of Economic Programming and the Budget, and Deputy Director of the Central Bank of Mexico. Frederick Iseman ’74 Director of the Program for the Study of Globalization at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, with professorships in International Economics and Politics and at the Yale School of the Environment. Member of The Elders, the Group of Thirty, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, and the Kofi Annan Commission on Elections and Democracy in the Digital Age. Independent Director of Citigroup (since 2010), Alcoa (2002 to present in current form) and Procter and Gamble (2001 to 2019); international advisory board member at BP. Editor of influential volumes including Trade in the 21st Century (2021), The Future of Globalization (Routledge, 2008), Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto (Brookings, 2008) and Reforming the United Nations for Peace and Security (2005); Forbes columnist, 2001 to 2007. Recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom from Fear Award, the Berkeley Medal, Yale’s Wilbur Cross Medal, and honorary degrees from Yale, Harvard and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, among others. Biography Mexico entered 1995 with a collapsing peso, dollar-denominated short-term debt the government could not roll over, and an incoming president six weeks into office. The policy response shaped how emerging-market crises have been handled since. Ernesto Zedillo led that government, and six years later handed power to an opposition candidate in the country’s first democratic transition of the modern era. That experience sits behind the work he has done at Yale since 2002, where he directs the Program for the Study of Globalization at the Jackson School of Global Affairs. The programme has produced a stream of edited volumes on the live questions in trade, climate policy, UN reform and drug policy, with Zedillo as editor and author. His Forbes column ran for six years. His reading of globalization is not theoretical; it is built on governing through one of the defining episodes of the era and staying close to the policy conversation ever since. What makes him useful to corporate audiences is the combination of that academic base with two decades of independent directorships at Citigroup, Alcoa and Procter and Gamble. He has sat on the audit and risk side of multinational boards through the 2008 crisis, the rise of trade friction with China, and the reorganisation of supply chains. He knows how geopolitical analysis translates, or fails to translate, into capital decisions. He continues to serve on The Elders, the Group of Thirty, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s work on planetary health. He was the architect of Progresa, the Mexican conditional cash-transfer programme that Brazil, Colombia and dozens of other governments later adapted. The range matters because the argument he brings to a board or executive audience is not a topic briefing. It is a view of where the international system is heading from someone who has governed inside it, taught it, and helped steer large companies through it. Key speaking topics Globalization and the future of the international trading system Macroeconomic policy and emerging-market risk Geopolitical shifts and multilateral institutions US-Mexico relations and North American economic integration Climate policy and international cooperation Social policy design and conditional cash-transfer programmes Global governance reform Ideal for Board and C-suite audiences weighing country risk, trade exposure and cross-border capital allocation Financial services, industrial and consumer-goods companies with significant emerging-market or Latin American footprints CEO forums, investor conferences and policy gatherings that need a credible read on globalization and geopolitical risk Public sector and multilateral audiences working on trade policy, development finance or social policy design Audience outcomes A sharper read on what the unwinding of the post-1990 trade order means for corporate strategy A direct account of how a government actually makes decisions during a currency and debt crisis, and what that implies for today’s sovereign risk A realistic view of where multilateral institutions still function and where they do not An informed perspective on US-Mexico economic relations and North American supply chain strategy A grounded framework for thinking about social policy design, drawn from the Progresa experience

Why organisations work with Eugene Fama He is the architect of the efficient markets hypothesis and co-author of the Fama-French three-factor model, two of the handful of frameworks that genuinely shape how serious institutions set investment policy. His 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller, was awarded specifically for empirical analysis of asset prices, the exact question committees face when they debate active versus passive, factor exposures, or long-run return assumptions. He has sat inside the practitioner world for more than four decades as a founding director of Dimensional Fund Advisors, so the perspective he brings to a room has been stress-tested against real portfolios, not just published papers. As chairman of the Center for Research in Security Prices at Chicago Booth, he oversees the dataset that underpins modern empirical finance, which gives his reading of current market behaviour an evidential weight few others can match. Before him, “what works in markets” was largely opinion. After his research, it became a testable claim. Institutions that care about fiduciary defensibility value that shift directly. Biography highlights Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2013, for empirical analysis of asset prices. Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Chairman of the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) at Chicago Booth. Founding director and member of the Investment Research Committee at Dimensional Fund Advisors. Author of more than 100 journal articles and the books “The Theory of Finance” (with Merton Miller), “Foundations of Finance”, and “The Fama Portfolio”. First recipient of the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics (2005), the Morgan Stanley AFA Award for Excellence in Finance (2007) and the Onassis Prize in Finance (2009). Biography Most of what financial markets look like from a trading floor was, until the 1960s, a matter of opinion. “Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work”, published in the Journal of Finance in May 1970, reframed the question as an empirical one and forced the industry to answer it with data. Eugene Fama wrote that paper while on the Chicago faculty he has now held for more than five decades. The body of work that followed is the intellectual spine of evidence-based investing. The 1992 paper with Kenneth French, “The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns”, established that exposure to market, size and value factors explained the overwhelming share of historical returns in diversified portfolios. That result is why index and factor strategies now dominate institutional allocation, and why active managers are held to a much harder standard than they were a generation ago. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly to Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller for their empirical analysis of asset prices. At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business he holds the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professorship and chairs the Center for Research in Security Prices, the dataset underneath most serious empirical finance. Since 1981 he has served as a founding director of Dimensional Fund Advisors, where the research has been deployed inside real portfolios at institutional scale. For boards and investment committees, the value is specific. He is the person who built the framework they are implicitly using when they debate active fees, factor tilts, or long-horizon assumptions, and he has stayed close enough to practice to speak to those debates with current evidence rather than historical summary. Key speaking topics Market efficiency and the empirical behaviour of asset prices The Fama-French factor models and expected returns Evidence-based and index-driven investment strategy Portfolio construction, diversification and long-horizon risk Active versus passive management under fiduciary constraints Empirical methods in financial economics Ideal for Boards, investment committees and trustees of pensions, endowments and sovereign funds CIOs, CFOs and heads of treasury setting long-horizon capital policy Asset managers, wealth managers and financial services executives refining their investment philosophy Academic and policy audiences engaged with capital markets research Audience outcomes A sharper read on what the empirical record actually says about predicting and beating markets A clearer basis for evaluating active managers, factor strategies and fee structures Language and evidence to defend long-horizon, diversified policy choices to stakeholders Direct engagement with the researcher whose frameworks sit underneath modern portfolio policy Grounded perspective on where current market debates diverge from, or align with, the empirical evidence

Why organisations work with Ewald Nowotny A first-hand account of ECB Governing Council decision-making across the sovereign debt crisis, the negative-rate era, and the start of unconventional policy unwind, by someone who voted in the room. Cross-institutional perspective most central bankers cannot match: ECB Governing Council, Vice President of the European Investment Bank, CEO of BAWAG P.S.K., and a chair of the Austrian Parliament’s Finance Committee. An economist’s framework, not a commentator’s view. Three decades as a full professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business, with nine books and a standard public finance textbook in its fifth edition. A direct read on European political economy and the durability of the euro, from a participant who was inside the German-Austrian bloc on the Council during its most contested years. Biography highlights Governor, Oesterreichische Nationalbank, and member of the ECB Governing Council, 2008 to 2019. Vice President, European Investment Bank, 1999 to 2003. CEO, BAWAG P.S.K. Group, 2006 to 2008. Full Professor of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, 1981 to 2008; Vice Rector for Finance, 2003 to 2005. Member of the Austrian National Council, 1978 to 1999; Chair of the Finance Committee, 1985 to 1999. Chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur (2017); Honorary Member, SUERF. Biography The eurozone has spent fifteen years inside policy regimes most boards were not built to read. Sovereign debt crisis, negative rates, asset purchase programmes, and the start of policy normalisation each redrew the cost of capital and the political settlement around it. Ewald Nowotny was inside the room where those decisions were taken. As Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank from 2008 to 2019, he sat on the ECB Governing Council through every one of those phases. He voted on the response to the Greek crisis, on the launch of large-scale asset purchases, and on the policy stance that defined European credit conditions for a decade. His public commentary, captured across BIS speech archives and central banking media, tracked the substantive arguments inside the Council rather than the headlines outside it. Before the central bank, his career covered the institutions that shape European capital flows from different angles. He served as Vice President of the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg from 1999 to 2003, then as CEO of BAWAG P.S.K. Group during a period of acute restructuring at the Austrian bank. Earlier, he chaired the Finance Committee of the Austrian Parliament for fourteen years. The academic standing is the second axis. He held a full professorship at Vienna University of Economics and Business for almost three decades and co-authored the standard German-language textbook on public sector finance, now in its fifth edition. He was made Chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur in 2017 and is an honorary member of SUERF, the European Money and Finance Forum. Key speaking topics Eurozone monetary policy and the future of the euro ECB decision-making and central bank independence European banking regulation after the financial crisis Sovereign debt and fiscal policy in the EU Macroeconomic outlook and global capital markets Public sector finance Ideal for Boards and audit committees stress-testing capital and treasury assumptions against European monetary policy CFOs, group treasurers, and CIOs in banking, insurance, and asset management Public-sector and supranational audiences working on EU economic governance Senior policy and corporate-affairs leaders engaging with European institutions Audience outcomes A working account of how the ECB Governing Council weighs price stability against financial stability, from someone who voted on those trade-offs. A clearer view of what is structural versus cyclical in eurozone politics, including the German-Austrian fiscal stance and its likely persistence. Specific reference points for reading future ECB decisions: which arguments tend to win on the Council, and which signals matter. Context on the European Investment Bank and the EU’s supranational lending architecture as a tool of policy and capital allocation.

Why organisations work with Felix Oberholzer-Gee His Value Stick reduces competitive strategy to two quantifiable variables – customer willingness-to-pay and employee willingness-to-sell – giving leadership teams a data-driven basis for ranking strategic priorities rather than accumulating them. His central argument – that consistent outperformers do fewer things, not more things – gives boards and strategy teams a principled case for simplification that does not read as retreat or reduced ambition. The framework is designed to be cascaded across an organisation, not held at the strategy function level; it has been used in HBS executive programmes including the Harvard General Management Program and validated by senior practitioners including the CEOs of Michelin and Google X. His research base spans top-tier peer-reviewed economics journals (American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy) and two decades of HBS executive teaching, so the framework holds under board-level scrutiny and works in a workshop setting. As co-host of After Hours on the TED Audio Collective with Youngme Moon and Mihir Desai, he brings the same analytical rigour to live, public business questions – signalling a communicator as well as a researcher. Biography highlights Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration, Strategy Unit, Harvard Business School – member of faculty since 2003 Author: Better, Simpler Strategy: A Value-Based Guide to Exceptional Performance (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021) Creator of the Value Stick framework, taught in HBS MBA and executive programmes including the Harvard General Management Program Faculty Chair: Driving Digital Strategy; Senior Executive Leadership Program for China; Managing Turbulence – Harvard Business School HBS Class of 2006 Faculty Teaching Award (best teacher in core curriculum); 2002 Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Award, Wharton School Research published in American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Law and Economics Co-host of After Hours, TED Audio Collective, alongside HBS professors Youngme Moon and Mihir Desai Former faculty member, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; former Managing Director, Symo Electronics (Switzerland) Biography Felix Oberholzer-Gee has spent more than two decades at Harvard Business School making a counterintuitive argument: the organisations that consistently outperform their rivals are doing fewer things than their competitors, not more. His work is less a critique of strategic planning than a dismantling of the assumption that better strategy means broader strategy. The tool at the centre of his approach is the Value Stick, a framework he developed through research and refined through HBS executive programmes. It measures competitive performance through two variables: customer willingness-to-pay at one end, and employee and supplier willingness-to-sell at the other. The gap between them is the value a firm creates. Any initiative that does not widen that gap, his research shows, is a drain on competitive advantage rather than a contribution to it. That argument is the basis of Better, Simpler Strategy (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021), endorsed in practice by the CEOs of Michelin and Google X. The framework is data-driven and designed to work at every level of an organisation – from board-level portfolio decisions to operational choices about talent and supplier relationships. Oberholzer-Gee holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich and has served in senior leadership roles at HBS, including chair of the MBA programme and Senior Associate Dean for the school’s global research centers. His research has been published in the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy, and covered by the Financial Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. As co-host of After Hours on the TED Audio Collective, he applies the same analytical approach to business and culture questions with a wide public audience – extending the reach of his strategic thinking well beyond the executive classroom. Key speaking topics Value-based competitive strategy The Value Stick framework and willingness-to-pay analysis Strategic focus and initiative prioritisation Digital transformation and value creation Non-market strategy and competitive positioning Business performance in digital and disrupted markets Global competition and the Chinese economy Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and corporate strategy teams choosing between competing strategic priorities Boards and senior leadership teams evaluating competitive positioning Executive education cohorts focused on general management and commercial strategy Leadership teams in digitally disrupted sectors reassessing the value they create for customers and talent Audience outcomes A single, quantifiable framework for assessing whether a strategic initiative creates or destroys competitive value Clarity on how to reduce strategic complexity without reducing strategic ambition A practical method for mapping competitive advantage through willingness-to-pay and willingness-to-sell Sharper criteria for deciding which initiatives to pursue and which to cut A common language for strategy discussions that can be applied consistently across business units and leadership levels

Why organisations work with Fernando Trias de Bes He is the only Spanish author to have co-written books with Philip Kotler, and the frameworks in Lateral Marketing and Winning at Innovation give leadership teams a shared vocabulary for where their ideas actually come from. Winning at Innovation, with its A-to-F Model, won the CMI Innovation and Entrepreneurship category at the 2013 Management Book of the Year Awards, a credential that speaks directly to boards asking how innovation should be structured inside the firm. He runs Salvetti and Llombart, a Barcelona-based consumer research and innovation consultancy whose client list has included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle and McKinsey, which means the classroom work is tested against paying clients. He bridges two registers most economists do not reach, serious academic marketing theory and popular business writing, and audiences that have read La buena suerte or El libro negro del emprendedor often arrive already familiar with his thinking. He presents in English and Spanish and has been delivering executive-level keynotes since 2003, with hundreds of international engagements behind him. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Marketing Management at ESADE Business School since 1994. Co-author with Philip Kotler of Lateral Marketing (Wiley, 2003) and Winning at Innovation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). CMI Management Book of the Year 2013, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category, for Winning at Innovation. Founder and President of Salvetti and Llombart, a consumer insight and innovation consultancy working with PepsiCo, Sony, HP, Nestle and McKinsey. Regular columnist for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal; author of more than twenty books of essay and fiction translated into more than thirty languages. Winner of the Premio Espasa de Ensayo (2015), Premio De Hoy de Ensayo (2009) and Shinpukai Prize (Japan, 2005). Biography Most innovation in large companies is lateral in name only. Teams segment further, tweak an existing product, and call it new. Fernando Trias de Bes spent two decades arguing, in books co-written with Philip Kotler, that this is the core reason corporate pipelines stall, and building methods that address it directly. Lateral Marketing, published by Wiley in 2003, set out a structured way to generate product concepts that do not come from narrower segmentation but from a different logical operation on the category itself. Winning at Innovation, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011, took the argument further with the A-to-F Model, a step-by-step description of the roles and stages an organisation needs to convert ideas into launches. The Chartered Management Institute named it Innovation and Entrepreneurship Book of the Year at its 2013 awards. Trias de Bes has taught marketing and innovation at ESADE Business School since 1994 and runs Salvetti and Llombart, the Barcelona consumer research and innovation consultancy he co-founded in 1996. Clients have included PepsiCo, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, McKinsey and Nestle, which gives the academic frameworks a field of consumer goods and services to answer to. Beyond the business books he writes columns for La Vanguardia, ARA and El Pais Semanal, and has published essays and novels translated into more than thirty languages, including La buena suerte, co-written with Alex Rovira, and El libro negro del emprendedor. The Premio Espasa de Ensayo in 2015 sits alongside earlier recognition in Japan and Spain. That range, economist, consultant, columnist, novelist, is the unusual shape of the author, and it is what audiences tend to remember from the keynote. Key speaking topics Business model innovation Lateral marketing and creativity in commercial strategy The A-to-F Model for organising innovation Entrepreneurship and the economics of new ventures Economic trends and consumer behaviour Corporate reinvention and disruptive thinking Ideal for CMOs, CSOs and heads of innovation confronting commoditised categories and stalled pipelines. Executive committees running corporate strategy offsites on growth and reinvention. Business schools and management development programmes covering innovation, marketing and entrepreneurship. Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for lateral versus vertical innovation that a leadership team can use the next day. The A-to-F structure for assigning innovation roles and stages inside an organisation. Concrete examples, drawn from consumer goods and services, of where breakthrough ideas actually come from. A sharper read on why most corporate innovation produces line extensions rather than category moves.

Why organisations work with Francis Fukuyama His thesis on political decay gives boards a usable lens for what is actually weakening in Western democracies, beyond the daily news cycle. He has direct policy experience from the US State Department and RAND, so the analysis lands as institutional reading, not commentary. The End of History and the Last Man has appeared in over twenty foreign editions and remains the reference point for debates on liberal democracy, which makes him a credible keynote for global audiences. As Mosbacher Director of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, he is running a live research programme on the questions leaders are asking about. Few speakers can connect populism, identity politics, and geopolitical realignment inside a single coherent framework grounded in thirty years of published work. Biography highlights Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law; Director, Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy, Stanford. Author of The End of History and the Last Man, The Origins of Political Order, Political Order and Political Decay, Trust, Identity, and Liberalism and Its Discontents. Former Policy Planning Staff, US Department of State; former Political Science Department, RAND Corporation. Recipient of the 2024 Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration. Chair of the editorial board of American Purpose; columnist of Frankly Fukuyama on Substack. Board member at RAND, Freedom House, and the Volcker Alliance; fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration; member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Biography The institutions that underwrite Western market economies were built to be predictable. They are now a source of risk. Francis Fukuyama has spent three decades tracing why, and the work is the reason serious leaders bring him into strategic conversations. His 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man argued that liberal democracy paired with market economies would become the governing template for modern societies. The argument was widely misread as triumphalism. The later work, The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay, sets out a far more demanding account of how states, rule of law, and accountable government hold together, and how they come apart. From Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, where he is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow and Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, he now runs a live research programme on governance and institutional quality. His recent books Identity and Liberalism and Its Discontents take the framework into the territory boards actually need to understand: populism, identity politics, the sources of democratic backsliding, and what a defensible liberalism looks like under pressure from both flanks. The credibility is not only academic. He served on the Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department and at RAND, sits on the boards of RAND, Freedom House, and the Volcker Alliance, and in 2024 received the Fred Riggs Award for Lifetime Achievement in International and Comparative Public Administration. That record is why a senior leadership team reading his analysis on the trajectory of a democracy can treat it as institutional judgement, not punditry. Key speaking topics Liberal democracy and political order Geopolitical realignment and US-China competition Populism, identity politics, and democratic backsliding Governance, state capacity, and institutional quality Rule of law and economic development The long-term outlook for the liberal international order Technology, platform power, and democratic institutions Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting long-horizon strategy across the US, Europe, and Asia. Chief strategy officers, chief risk officers, and heads of government affairs who need political risk framed at an institutional level. Investor and LP audiences building views on sovereign, regulatory, and geopolitical exposure. Public-sector leadership programmes, foreign ministries, and multilateral institutions working on governance reform. Audience outcomes A clearer reading of which pressures on liberal democracies are cyclical and which are structural. A framework for thinking about state capacity, rule of law, and accountability as distinct variables when assessing country risk. A more precise account of how populism and identity politics translate into policy volatility. A sharper view of the US-China competition beyond the usual trade and technology headlines. Vocabulary and concepts leaders can carry back into strategy discussions with their own teams.

Why organisations work with Fraser Nelson Fifteen years editing The Spectator, the longest-running weekly in the English language, gives him a working memory of Westminster that most commentators do not have. He chairs panels and interviews senior figures for a living, which shows up on a corporate stage as pace, real questions, and genuine pushback rather than a scripted Q and A. He has argued the centre-right case on welfare, tax and growth in print and on Channel 4 Dispatches, so audiences that disagree with him still get a coherent argument rather than a talking-points loop. Sits on the board of the Centre for Policy Studies and the advisory board of the Centre for Social Justice, which keeps him close to the policy process leaders are trying to read. Won the British Press Award for Political Journalist of the Year in 2013 and Columnist of the Year at the 2025 British Journalism Awards, a twelve-year span that speaks to durability rather than a moment. Biography highlights Editor of The Spectator, 2009 to 2024. Columnist for The Times; previously a Daily Telegraph columnist for thirteen years. British Press Award, Political Journalist of the Year, 2013. Columnist of the Year, British Journalism Awards, 2025. BSME Editor of the Year (current affairs) in 2013, 2021 and 2023. Board member, Centre for Policy Studies; advisory board, Centre for Social Justice. Presenter of Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries including How The Rich Get Richer (2014) and a 2024 Wincott-Award-winning investigation into Britain’s sickness-benefits system. Biography British political reporting runs on access, and access runs on trust built over years. Fraser Nelson spent fifteen of those years editing The Spectator, from 2009 to 2024, during which the magazine’s subscriptions roughly doubled while the wider weekly market shrank. That job puts an editor on first-name terms with every Prime Minister, Chancellor and opposition leader of the period. Before The Spectator he covered business at The Times, then ran Scottish politics for The Scotsman. He now writes a weekly column for The Times, after thirteen years at the Daily Telegraph. The awards track records the endurance rather than the moment: Political Journalist of the Year at the 2013 British Press Awards, Editors’ Editor of the Year in the same year, BSME current-affairs editor of the year in 2021 and 2023, and Columnist of the Year at the 2025 British Journalism Awards. His policy work sits on the board of the Centre for Policy Studies, where he delivered the 2009 Keith Joseph Lecture, and on the advisory board of the Centre for Social Justice. That work has produced two Channel 4 Dispatches documentaries, including How The Rich Get Richer in 2014 and a 2024 investigation into Britain’s sickness-benefits system that won a Wincott Award. On stage he is most often used as a moderator and interviewer of senior figures, where the job is to pull something useful out of a Chancellor or a Cabinet minister in thirty minutes in front of a corporate audience. For clients who want the content rather than the craft, he delivers a sharp read on UK politics, economic policy, and the welfare reform debate he has argued from the centre-right for two decades. Key speaking topics UK politics and Westminster decision-making British economic policy and the case for reform Welfare, work and the long-term fiscal picture The state of British journalism and media Brexit and its unfinished consequences Panel moderation and on-stage interviews Ideal for Boards and investment committees making UK-exposed capital and hiring decisions Annual conferences that want a credible moderator for a minister, regulator or CEO panel Partner and client dinners where the brief is a half-hour read of the political year Public affairs and policy teams inside UK-regulated sectors briefing senior leadership Audience outcomes A clearer read on which Westminster signals are durable and which are noise A centre-right argument on tax, welfare and growth that a mixed room can engage with A sense of how Treasury, Number 10 and the opposition actually make decisions For moderated sessions, a sharper interview of the senior guest than the room expected

Why organisations work with Gamal Fahnbulleh A working news anchor on ITV Granada Reports and ITV National News bulletins, which means the room gets the real calibre of live interviewer, not a retired name lending their profile. Chairs major sector conferences on the record, including the Advertising Association’s LEAD North and the Great Northern Conference at Cutlers’ Hall, Sheffield, which tells a booker he can hold a senior business audience. Comfortable across formats that most speakers are not: panel moderation, awards hosting, after-dinner remarks, keynote conversation, fireside Q and A, and virtual hybrid sessions. Brings a serious journalistic backbone to the hosting role: Manchester politics and international politics graduate, postgraduate broadcast journalism at City, an embed with the British Army in Afghanistan behind him, so the room trusts him on substantive subject matter. Recognised by his own industry for presenting craft: a 2021 Royal Television Society nomination for Best Regional Presenter, and a contributor to ITV Granada’s RTS North West Award for Best Regional Story in 2010. Biography highlights Co-presenter of ITV Granada Reports for North West England and the Isle of Man, anchoring alongside Lucy Meacock since January 2021. Relief presenter on ITV National News bulletins, including News at Ten. Former Sky News anchor across Sky News Breakfast, Sky News Tonight and Sky News at Ten. Chair and host at the Advertising Association’s LEAD North conference and the Great Northern Conference 2021 at Cutlers’ Hall, Sheffield. Nominated for Best Regional Presenter, Royal Television Society, 2021. Postgraduate Diploma in Broadcast Journalism, City, University of London; BA Honours in Politics and History and MA in International Politics, University of Manchester. Biography Most conference agendas collapse at the join between sessions. The keynote lands, the panel files on, and the conversation loses altitude because no one in the chair knows how to translate energy from one format into the next. That translation is the craft a working news anchor brings to a live room, and it is why senior booker teams at the Advertising Association’s LEAD North and the Great Northern Conference in Sheffield have handed Gamal Fahnbulleh the microphone. He is a working journalist first. He co-presents ITV Granada Reports for the North West of England and the Isle of Man with Lucy Meacock, anchors relief shifts on ITV National News bulletins, and previously held anchor positions across Sky News Breakfast, Sky News Tonight and Sky News at Ten. His industry nominated him for Best Regional Presenter at the Royal Television Society Awards in 2021. The journalistic authority is earned. He read Politics and History at the University of Manchester, added an MA in International Politics, and trained in broadcast journalism at City, University of London before winning one of ten places on the ITV News Group Bursary Scheme. He later embedded with the 1st Battalion, The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment on a tour of Afghanistan, contributing to ITV Granada’s RTS North West Award for Best Regional Story in 2010. For corporate clients, the practical value is simple. He can host an awards night, chair a panel of chief executives, conduct a fireside interview, and moderate a hybrid session without the room feeling a change in gear. He is booked for hosting craft, and he treats every brief as live television. Key speaking topics Conference chairing and panel moderation Awards night and after-dinner hosting Fireside interviews with senior leaders Broadcast journalism and live news craft Reporting from conflict zones and embedded military journalism Regional economic and leadership conversations International affairs and global news context Ideal for Annual conferences requiring a chair who can hold a senior executive audience for a full day. Awards ceremonies and gala dinners that need a host with live-broadcast pacing and on-camera presence. Panel events where CEOs, investors or public-sector leaders expect real questions rather than polite ones. Media, advertising and regional-growth conferences where journalistic credibility matters to the room. Audience outcomes A tightly run agenda that stays on time across keynote, panel and audience-Q-and-A transitions. Sharper panel conversations, because the chair knows when to follow up and when to move on. Senior speakers drawn out on the specific points the audience came to hear, not the ones they rehearsed. A room that leaves feeling the event was serious, not stage-managed.

Why organisations work with Gary McGann He has run the playbook, not studied it: a cross-border merger with Kappa Packaging in 2005, a 2007 Euronext IPO, and thirteen years as CEO of a global listed packaging multinational. He brings chair-level governance experience from Flutter Entertainment, Aryzta, Allegro.eu, Aon Ireland and Sicon, which is a rare spread across gambling, food, e-commerce, insurance and construction. His view of the Irish and European business environment is informed by direct roles: former President of IBEC, former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, and current Chairman of Teneo’s Ireland Advisory Board. He is credible with both boards and operators because he has sat on both sides, including through the Anglo Irish Bank period and the post-2008 rebuild of Irish corporate confidence. Organisations book him when the brief is honest conversation about leadership judgment, not motivational framing. Biography highlights Group CEO of Smurfit Kappa, November 2002 to August 2015, including the 2005 Smurfit-Kappa merger and 2007 IPO on Euronext Dublin and Amsterdam. Former CEO of Aer Lingus Group and former CEO of Gilbeys of Ireland. Former Chairman of Flutter Entertainment plc (formerly Paddy Power Betfair), 2016 to 2023. Former Chairman of Aryzta AG, 2016 to 2020, and former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries. Former President of IBEC, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. Senior Advisor and Chairman of Teneo’s Ireland Advisory Board; current Chairman of Aon Ireland Investment Holdings, Sicon Ltd and Allegro.eu SA. Named Business and Finance “Business Person of the Year” 2008; UCD Alumni Business Award 2014. Biography Jefferson Smurfit and Kappa Packaging announced their merger in 2005 and completed it that December. Gary McGann was Group CEO. Two years later, he took the combined Smurfit Kappa public on Euronext Dublin and Amsterdam, raising net proceeds of around 1.3 billion euros. That sequence, executed through the run-up to and aftermath of the financial crisis, is the core of his operating record. Before Smurfit Kappa he ran Aer Lingus Group and, earlier, Gilbeys of Ireland. Three very different businesses: aviation in deregulation, a drinks operation inside a global brand owner, and a packaging giant listed in two markets. The common thread is running companies through periods when the external conditions refuse to hold still. The post-executive chapter is largely about governance. He chaired Flutter Entertainment through its transformation into a global gambling group, chaired Aryzta through a Swiss food business in distress, and now chairs Aon Ireland, Sicon and Allegro.eu alongside the Teneo Ireland Advisory Board. As a former President of IBEC and former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, he has also operated at the industry and policy level in Ireland and across Europe. What makes his perspective valuable to a senior audience is the unglamorous part of the record. A merger that actually integrated. An IPO that priced and cleared. A board career shaped by Anglo Irish Bank, Aryzta’s restructuring and Flutter’s scale-up, which is to say shaped by the moments when governance either holds or does not. Key speaking topics Leadership through mergers, IPOs and post-crisis recovery Board governance and the chair-CEO relationship Corporate strategy in listed multinationals Ireland and European business environment Turnaround and restructuring in complex organisations Long-horizon succession and leadership development Ideal for Boards, chairs and non-executive directors navigating restructuring, succession or M and A integration CEO and executive committee offsites where the brief is leadership judgment under pressure, not functional training Senior leadership audiences in packaging, aviation, consumer goods, financial services and gambling Irish and European business and policy audiences, including IBEC-style industry gatherings Audience outcomes A grounded account of what boards and CEOs actually do during a merger, IPO or downturn, from someone who has run each Sharper thinking on the chair-CEO relationship and where it breaks A clearer read on the Irish and European corporate operating environment from inside the room Practical reference points for governance decisions in distressed or transitional businesses Language for talking about leadership that avoids the usual vocabulary of resilience and transformation