Alex Edmans
Boards keep being told that purpose and profit pull in opposite directions, and that responsible business is a cost to bear rather than a source of value. At the same time, the data, studies, and stories that shape commercial decisions are routinely overstated, misread, or built on weak evidence. Senior leaders need a sharper way to separate persuasive narrative from genuine signal before they commit capital.
Alex Edmans is a Professor of Finance at London Business School who shows leaders how purpose-driven strategy creates long-term value, and how to read the evidence behind business decisions without being misled.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Alex Edmans
- He gives boards a research-grounded answer to the purpose-versus-profit debate, drawn from Grow the Pie, the Financial Times Best Business Book of 2020.
- His Ladder of Misinference framework, from May Contain Lies, equips executives to scrutinise the studies, statistics, and stories that drive strategic decisions.
- He bridges peer-reviewed corporate finance research and the operating reality of investment committees, advising the Investor Forum, Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing, and Royal London Asset Management.
- He has been recognised as Poets and Quants Professor of the Year and elected a Fellow of the British Academy, signals of academic seriousness rare among speakers on commercial strategy.
- He translates technical finance into language a non-specialist board can act on, refined through TED, Davos, and UK Parliament audiences.
Biography highlights
- Professor of Finance, London Business School; Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business, Gresham College.
- Author of Grow the Pie (Cambridge University Press), Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year 2020, translated into nine languages.
- Author of May Contain Lies (Penguin), introducing the Ladder of Misinference framework for evaluating evidence.
- Co-author of Principles of Corporate Finance with Brealey, Myers, and Allen, a standard MBA textbook.
- Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
- TED main-stage speaker and Davos contributor; published in Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Economist.
Biography
The argument that companies must choose between serving shareholders and serving everyone else has shaped a generation of corporate decisions. Edmans’s research, set out in Grow the Pie, dismantles that trade-off using empirical evidence on long-run firm performance. The book was Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year in 2020 and has been translated into nine languages.
His path runs through Oxford, Morgan Stanley in London and New York, an MIT Sloan PhD as a Fulbright Scholar, a tenured position at Wharton, and his current chair at London Business School. Alongside LBS he holds the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business chair at Gresham College.
A second body of work, May Contain Lies, addresses a problem that boards face every week: the studies, statistics, and stories that arrive in their reading packs are often weaker than they appear. Edmans’s Ladder of Misinference distinguishes statements from facts, facts from data, data from evidence, and evidence from proof. It is a tool senior leaders can apply directly to the cases put in front of them.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences, was elected President of the Western Finance Association, and served as Managing Editor of the Review of Finance. Advisory work with the Investor Forum, Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing, Novo Nordisk’s Sustainability Council, and Royal London Asset Management keeps the research grounded in live capital allocation decisions.
Key speaking topics
- Purposeful business and long-term value creation
- Responsible investing and sustainable finance
- Behavioural economics in commercial decision-making
- Evidence literacy and the Ladder of Misinference
- Corporate governance and board decision quality
- ESG strategy beyond narrative
- Diversity, equity and inclusion in business performance
Ideal for
- Boards and investment committees evaluating purpose, ESG, and capital allocation choices
- CEOs and CFOs framing long-term value to investors and analysts
- Asset managers, pension trustees, and stewardship teams
- Senior leadership offsites where the brief is to sharpen strategic decision-making
Audience outcomes
- A defensible position on the purpose-versus-profit question, anchored in finance research rather than ideology
- A working method for stress-testing studies, data, and stories before they shape strategy
- Sharper criteria for evaluating ESG claims, both inbound from managers and outbound to investors
- Specific examples and frameworks senior leaders can take into their next board or executive committee
- A clearer view of how stakeholder investment translates into long-run shareholder return
Talks
A research-led case that investing in stakeholders creates, rather than destroys, shareholder value over time.
Key takeaways:
- The empirical evidence connecting employee, customer, and societal investment to long-run financial performance
- Why the trade-off framing leads to weaker strategic decisions
- How to design corporate purpose that survives contact with the capital markets
A tour of the cognitive and methodological errors that distort the studies, data, and stories used in business decisions.
Key takeaways:
- The Ladder of Misinference and how to apply it to board papers
- Why confirmation bias and binary thinking are particularly costly at executive level
- Practical habits for individuals and organisations that want sharper decision quality
A view of where ESG narrative diverges from capital allocation reality, drawn from advisory work with major asset managers.
Key takeaways:
- The gap between ESG marketing and operating substance
- What stewardship looks like when it is more than disclosure
- Where responsible investment thesis genuinely improves return, and where it does not
Videos
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| South America | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |