Economic Forecasting

Why organisations work with Desmond Lachman Three careers in one seat: IMF crisis rooms, Salomon Smith Barney’s emerging-markets strategy desk, and two decades of published analysis at AEI. Very few macro commentators have worked the lender, the investor, and the think-tank perspectives on the same problem. A track record of specific named calls, not generic warnings. Argentina’s default, the US housing bust, and the eurozone sovereign-debt stress were all argued in print before they broke. Active columnist at Project Syndicate with regular bylines in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Barron’s. What a client hears in a private session is the same argument serious financial readers are getting in print that week. A clear, unhedged house view on US fiscal sustainability, tariff shocks, and dollar risk. Useful for boards that want a counterweight to consensus forecasts from sell-side research. Fluency in the multilateral architecture. When the IMF, World Bank, or G20 becomes the story, he can explain what those institutions will and will not do, from direct experience inside them. Biography highlights Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, since 2003 Former Deputy Director, IMF Policy Development and Review Department; earlier Senior Advisor in the Western Hemisphere and European Departments Former Managing Director and Chief Emerging Market Economic Strategist, Salomon Smith Barney Adjunct Professor, Johns Hopkins University (SAIS) and Georgetown University Columnist at Project Syndicate; regular contributor to the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Barron’s, The Hill BBC Newsnight “Chart of the Year”, 2011, for his 10-year euro yields graph; credited by Bloomberg with calling the global credit crisis and eurozone stress PhD in Economics, Cambridge University; BA, University of the Witwatersrand Biography The argument that US debt dynamics and the dollar’s reserve status are unassailable is exactly the assumption Desmond Lachman has been dismantling in print for years. His Project Syndicate columns and AEI essays make the case that America is beginning to show the fiscal and currency signatures of a troubled emerging-market economy, and that the response from the IMF and major central banks will be slower and more constrained than markets are pricing. The credibility of that view rests on a career built across the three institutions that shape these outcomes. At the IMF, Lachman rose to Deputy Director of the Policy Development and Review Department after a decade as Senior Advisor in the Western Hemisphere and European Departments, the years that included the Mexican peso crisis and the build-up to Argentina’s default. He then moved to Salomon Smith Barney as Managing Director and Chief Emerging Market Economic Strategist, advising institutional investors on the same sovereign risks from the buy side. Since 2003 he has been a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, with adjunct chairs at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown. He writes regularly for the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Barron’s, and The Hill, and is interviewed on CNBC, BBC, NPR, and CNN when the story is sovereign debt, tariffs, or currency stress. BBC Newsnight picked his 10-year euro yields chart as Chart of the Year in 2011; Bloomberg credited him with calling the global credit crisis and the strains that the euro would create among member states. For a board or investment committee, the value is pointed: Lachman will name the scenarios, the trigger variables, and the policy responses he expects, and he will tell a room why the official forecasts are wrong when he believes they are. Key speaking topics US fiscal sustainability and sovereign debt risk The dollar and global reserve currency dynamics Eurozone macro and sovereign stress Emerging-market crises and capital flows Tariffs, trade policy, and the global economy The IMF, World Bank, and multilateral lender behaviour Inflation, interest rates, and central bank policy Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting multi-year capital allocation against macro and currency risk CFO, treasurer, and corporate-risk audiences stress-testing sovereign, FX, and rate exposure Asset managers, banks, and insurers briefing clients on emerging-market and eurozone outlooks Policy, trade, and government-affairs leaders tracking tariff and multilateral-lender dynamics Audience outcomes A specific read on where US fiscal and dollar risk sits in the current cycle, with the variables to watch A working mental model of how sovereign debt crises actually unfold, drawn from cases Lachman worked at the IMF and from Wall Street A candid view on what the IMF and major central banks will and will not do in the next stress episode Sharper questions to put to sell-side research and in-house economists on tariffs, currency, and emerging-market exposure

Why organisations work with David Smith More than three decades of reading the UK economy from inside the same national-press seat, which gives audiences a continuous interpretive line on monetary policy, fiscal cycles and recovery patterns that no rotating commentator can offer. A working journalist’s access. Smith writes the weekly Sunday Times economics column and a Times column, so briefings draw on live contact with policy thinkers, Treasury officials and City economists, not retrospective analysis. Authored catalogue covering the Thatcher-era monetarist experiment, the 2008 financial crisis, the China and India growth story, and post-crisis Britain. Few UK economics speakers can place a current decision against that depth of written record. Trusted by sector audiences for Budget and Spending Review briefings, including recurring briefings for the Disruptive Innovators Network in housing, which signals he reads as relevant to operational leaders, not just finance specialists. Academic credibility without academic remove: Honorary Professor at Nottingham and Visiting Professor at Cardiff, while still writing weekly for the national press. Biography highlights Economics Editor of The Sunday Times since 1989; also chief leader-writer, assistant editor and policy adviser. Weekly columnist for The Times since 2016. Honorary Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham; Visiting Professor, Cardiff University. Author of Free Lunch: Easily Digestible Economics, The Dragon and the Elephant, The Age of Instability, Something Will Turn Up and earlier titles including The Rise and Fall of Monetarism and North and South. Harold Wincott, Senior Financial Journalist of the Year; Economics Commentator of the Year (2013); Business Journalist of the Year, London Press Awards (2014); Property Columnist of the Year. Highly Commended Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards (2008). Biography UK economic policy has been rewritten at least three times in a generation: the monetarist experiment, the response to the 2008 crash, and the post-pandemic reset of inflation, rates and public spending. Reading each of those shifts as they happened, in the same national newspaper column, is a rare position. That is the seat David Smith has held since 1989. As Economics Editor of The Sunday Times, chief leader-writer and assistant editor, Smith writes the paper’s weekly economics column and contributes a separate weekly column to The Times. The work is grounded in continuous contact with Treasury officials, Bank of England watchers and City economists, which is why corporate audiences treat his Budget and Spending Review briefings as a baseline read rather than a comment piece. His books extend that frame backwards and outwards. The Rise and Fall of Monetarism, From Boom to Bust and North and South, track the structural arguments inside the UK economy. The Dragon and the Elephant set out the China and India growth story before it was a consensus board topic. The Age of Instability and Something Will Turn Up read the 2008 crisis and its long tail. The catalogue gives him a historical baseline that most current commentators do not have. Academic affiliations sit alongside the journalism rather than replacing it. Smith is Honorary Professor in Nottingham’s Faculty of Social Sciences and a Visiting Professor at Cardiff University, and has lectured at Nottingham’s Malaysia and Ningbo campuses. His awards record, including the Harold Wincott Senior Financial Journalist of the Year, the 2013 Economics Commentator of the Year and the 2014 Business Journalist of the Year at the London Press Awards, marks him as the commentator other commentators read. Key speaking topics UK economic policy and the Budget Bank of England and interest rate outlook Global markets and the US Federal Reserve UK and Europe after Brexit UK housing and property markets China, India and the shifting global economic order Long-run outlook for the UK economy Ideal for Boards and executive teams making capital allocation, hiring or pricing decisions against a moving macro picture CFOs, treasurers and heads of strategy are briefing leadership on the UK and global economic outlook Property, housing and real-estate leadership audiences planning against rate and policy cycles Annual conferences, partner meetings and client events are looking for a senior, non-partisan read of the UK economy Audience outcomes A clear, current read of where UK growth, inflation and interest rates are heading and what is driving each A view on the next Budget or fiscal event and how it changes the operating environment A grounded sense of how UK conditions sit against US, European and Asian economic shifts Confidence in distinguishing genuine structural change from short-term political and market noise Specific reference points from three decades of UK economic cycles that audiences can use in their own planning conversations

Why organisations work with Daniel Thorniley He has spent more than three decades inside the operational reality of CEEMEA business, first as Senior Vice President at The Economist Group in Vienna for 23 years, now as President of DT-Global Business Consulting. The intelligence is primary, not secondary. Through DT-Global and the CEEMEA Business Group, he convenes a standing network of country managers and regional executives from multinationals across the region, which means briefings are grounded in what operators are actually seeing. He translates political and macroeconomic shifts into commercial decisions: pricing, distribution, partnerships, headcount, capex. Regional MDs can use the output the week they hear it. Oxford-trained in Soviet political economy with a doctorate, and co-author of “Emerging Markets: Lessons for Business Success” (Profile Books, The Economist series), so the regional judgement is backed by published work and academic credentials, not just consultancy experience. Non-executive member of the Global Advisory Board of AECOM, with long-standing advisory relationships across major European and US corporations. He is used to speaking in the idiom of the board. Biography highlights Oxford University: BA, diploma and doctorate in Soviet political economy. Senior Vice President and Senior Consultant, The Economist Group, Vienna office, for 23 years. Founder and President, DT-Global Business Consulting GmbH, Vienna. Co-founder, CEEMEA Business Group, an advisory network for regional executives operating across Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Co-author, “Emerging Markets: Lessons for Business Success and the Outlook for Different Markets” (Profile Books / The Economist, 2004) with Nenad Pacek; author of a Palgrave Macmillan study on Soviet rural political economy. Member, Global Advisory Board, AECOM. Has briefed audiences including NATO, the United Nations, and corporate clients such as Coca-Cola, Procter and Gamble, Ernst and Young, Robert Bosch and Raiffeisen. Biography CEEMEA markets do not reward general-purpose economic commentary. A multinational running operations across Poland, Turkey, the Gulf, South Africa and, until recently, Russia needs someone who can say what the next two quarters look like in each of those environments and what to do about it. That is the gap Thorniley has built his career around. For 23 years he was Senior Vice President and Senior Consultant at The Economist Group in Vienna, covering global corporate trends and emerging markets. When the Vienna office closed in 2008, he founded DT-Global Business Consulting and co-founded the CEEMEA Business Group. Both serve the same buyer: a regional executive or board member who needs primary-source intelligence on CEE, CIS and MEA, not a repackaged macro report. The distinctive asset is the network. DT-Global and CEEMEA Business Group convene country managers and senior executives from multinationals with a regional presence, which means the analysis he delivers is built on what operators are seeing in their own P&Ls. That shows up in how the briefings are pitched, with specific guidance on pricing, distribution, staffing and capital allocation rather than high-altitude commentary. The academic foundation matters because the region rewards it. His Oxford doctorate in Soviet political economy and his Palgrave Macmillan monograph sit behind three decades of reading Russia and its neighbours; his co-authored Profile Books volume on emerging markets, written with Nenad Pacek under The Economist imprint, distilled the operational playbook for multinationals entering frontier economies. Sir John Major has publicly called him the world’s leading business expert on emerging markets. Key speaking topics CEEMEA economic and political outlook Russia, CIS and Central Asia business environment Central and Eastern Europe corporate strategy Middle East and Africa market entry and growth Global emerging markets risk and opportunity Multinational operating models in frontier economies Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material CEEMEA exposure Regional presidents, country managers and EMEA leadership teams Corporate strategy, risk intelligence and government affairs functions Annual leadership offsites and investor or partner conferences focused on emerging markets Audience outcomes A clear read on where CEE, CIS and MEA economies are heading in the next two to four quarters A practical view on how political risk is translating into pricing, distribution and hiring decisions on the ground Specific guidance on which markets in the region to lean into, which to hold, and which to reassess A framework for stress-testing corporate assumptions about Russia, Turkey, the Gulf and Sub-Saharan Africa Candid answers on how peer multinationals are adjusting their regional operating models

Why organisations work with Daniel Gros Direct lineage to the euro’s creation. As Economic Adviser to the Delors Committee, he worked on the blueprint that became Europe’s monetary union, and still publishes on its unfinished architecture. Two decades steering CEPS, Europe’s leading independent economic policy think tank, give him a working map of Brussels, Frankfurt, and national capitals that few outside economists can match. Current director of the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University, with live research output on EU competitiveness, defense financing, and the middle-technology trap. Adviser to the European Parliament and former member of the Advisory Scientific Council to the European Systemic Risk Board, with standing counsel histories to governments in Greece, the UK, and the US. A syndicated Project Syndicate columnist whose positions often move ahead of consensus, useful for boards trying to separate durable shifts from noise. Biography highlights Director, Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), 2000 to 2020. Economic Adviser to the Delors Committee, European Commission, on the design of the euro. Former economist at the International Monetary Fund. Adviser to the European Parliament; former member of the Advisory Scientific Council to the European Systemic Risk Board. Co-author of European Monetary Integration (with Niels Thygesen) and Open Issues in European Central Banking (with Lorenzo Bini Smaghi); syndicated columnist for Project Syndicate. Biography The euro was designed in the late 1980s inside a committee chaired by Jacques Delors. Daniel Gros was the economic adviser on that committee, one of the technical authors of a currency now used by more than 340 million people. That origin shapes how he reads every European crisis since. For twenty years he ran the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, the think tank most closely wired into EU institutions. Under his direction CEPS became a first reference for finance ministries, central banks, and the European Parliament on questions of monetary union, enlargement, and financial stability. He now directs the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University, where his research agenda has moved to EU competitiveness, defense financing, Chinese industrial policy, and what he calls the middle-technology trap. His authority rests on two things working together. The first is technical depth: a University of Chicago PhD, a career inside the IMF and European Commission, co-authorship of the standard textbook on European monetary integration. The second is access. He advises the European Parliament, has counselled governments in Greece, the UK, and the US, and sat on the Advisory Scientific Council to the European Systemic Risk Board. What he gives a senior audience is the ability to distinguish structural change from cyclical noise in the European economy. His Project Syndicate columns often take positions ahead of the Brussels consensus, which is the useful test of whether a commentator is describing reality or repeating it. Key speaking topics Eurozone economic policy and monetary union EU competitiveness and industrial strategy European defense financing and fiscal capacity Geopolitical economic risk and EU-China relations The international role of the euro European banking, financial stability, and capital markets EU enlargement and the political economy of integration Ideal for Boards and executive committees of European financial institutions, asset managers, and insurers pricing eurozone and sovereign risk. CEOs, CFOs, and strategy leads at multinationals reassessing European market exposure against US and Chinese policy shifts. Government relations, policy, and public affairs leaders tracking Brussels and Frankfurt decisions that affect capital allocation. Investor conferences and economic outlook events briefing senior audiences on EU macro conditions. Audience outcomes A sharper read on where the eurozone’s architecture is still fragile and where it is more resilient than headlines suggest. A working view of the EU competitiveness agenda, including industrial policy, defense spending, and the middle-technology trap. Clarity on how European responses to Chinese industrial policy and US tariff shifts will reshape capital flows and trade. A named set of indicators and policy triggers to watch over the next 12 to 24 months. Answers calibrated to senior decision-makers, drawing on direct experience advising parliaments, central banks, and governments.

Why organisations work with Dani Rodrik His “political trilemma of the world economy” – the argument that deep globalisation, national sovereignty, and democracy cannot all coexist simultaneously – gives leaders a precise framework for understanding trade conflict, populist backlash, and the limits of multilateral governance. No other speaker in this space originated a framework with comparable analytical reach. He was an early and rigorous critic of hyperglobalisation decades before it became a mainstream concern – his 1997 book Has Globalization Gone Too Far? challenged the economic consensus at a time when that consensus was near-universal. That track record gives his current views on de-globalisation a weight that commentary-based speakers cannot match. His most recent research on industrial policy – including the 2024 Annual Review of Economics paper “The New Economics of Industrial Policy” – provides organisations with an evidence-based lens on why governments are intervening in markets again, and what conditions make those interventions work or fail. His co-directorship of the Reimagining the Economy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, combined with long-standing engagement with the World Bank, IMF, and national governments, grounds his arguments in institutional and policy realities rather than theoretical abstractions. He addresses the specific commercial tension that most economists avoid: that markets require states, but too much globalisation undermines the states that markets depend on – a paradox directly relevant to any organisation managing regulatory risk, supply chain exposure, or international strategy. Biography highlights Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School; formerly Albert O. Hirschman Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Originator of the “political trilemma of the world economy” – one of the most cited frameworks in international economic theory Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences, 2020; Albert O. Hirschman Prize (inaugural), Social Science Research Council, 2007; Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, Tufts University, 2002 President of the International Economic Association, 2021-23 Author of more than twenty books including The Globalization Paradox (2011), Straight Talk on Trade (2017), and Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World (Princeton University Press, 2025) Regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 1998; affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London Member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; co-director, Reimagining the Economy Program, Harvard Kennedy School Biography Dani Rodrik has spent three decades making a single, uncomfortable argument: that the version of globalisation advanced since the 1990s contained the seeds of its own political destruction. His 2000 paper coining the “political trilemma of the world economy” – the claim that deep globalisation, national sovereignty, and democracy cannot coexist simultaneously – now reads less like a provocation than a forecast. Brexit, the rise of economic nationalism, and the collapse of the trade consensus have all traced the fault lines he identified. His 2011 book The Globalization Paradox gave the trilemma its fullest treatment: markets require functioning states, but aggressive global integration progressively undermines the democratic legitimacy that states need to operate. The book has become a reference point for policymakers and strategists trying to understand why the rules-based international order is under pressure from within its own societies, not only from geopolitical rivals. More recently, Rodrik has turned the argument forward. His work at Harvard’s Reimagining the Economy Program, his 2024 Annual Review of Economics paper on the new economics of industrial policy, and his 2025 book Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World set out the conditions under which governments can use selective intervention to create good jobs, reduce inequality, and manage the green transition without sacrificing the open economy entirely. The argument is neither protectionist nor conventionally liberal – it is a structured case for how managed markets can deliver outcomes that free markets, left alone, will not. At Harvard Kennedy School, where he has held the Ford Foundation Chair in International Political Economy since 1996, Rodrik has advised the World Bank, contributed monthly analysis to Project Syndicate since 1998, and served as President of the International Economic Association. His awards – including the Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences and the inaugural Albert O. Hirschman Prize of the Social Science Research Council – recognise a body of work that has demonstrably reshaped how economists and policymakers talk about trade, development, and the relationship between markets and democracy. Key speaking topics The political trilemma of globalisation Trade policy and economic nationalism Industrial policy and the future of manufacturing Economic development and growth strategy Inclusive prosperity and the labour market Geopolitics and the international economic order Post-neoliberal economic policy The relationship between democracy and market integration Ideal for Government ministers, central bank officials, and senior civil servants navigating trade and industrial policy decisions Board-level strategy and risk committees assessing geopolitical and regulatory exposure International economic forums, sovereign wealth funds, and multilateral institutions Chief economists and global research heads at financial institutions Audience outcomes A precise analytical framework – the political trilemma – for diagnosing why trade and globalisation conflicts are structural rather than episodic Clearer understanding of the conditions under which industrial policy and managed trade create value, and when they do not Insight into the relationship between economic inequality, democratic instability, and the pressures on international institutions A sharper vocabulary for board and government conversations about de-globalisation, reshoring, and the limits of multilateral governance Historical and comparative perspective on which economic policy models have produced broad-based growth in developing and advanced economies

Why organisations work with Bjørn Lomborg He brings a formal economic framework, developed with Nobel laureate economists through the Copenhagen Consensus project, for ranking interventions by return on spend rather than political salience. His argument is specific and well-published: The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press, 2001), False Alarm (Basic Books, 2020), and Best Things First (2023, named a Best Book of the year by The Economist) give boards a documented thesis to engage with. He is one of the few commentators on climate economics taken seriously in policy and finance rooms while remaining openly sceptical of orthodox climate spending priorities, which is valuable for leadership teams wanting a genuine debate rather than a consensus reaffirmation. He speaks the language of trade-offs, not advocacy, which suits boards and investment committees that have to defend capital allocation to shareholders and regulators. His institutional base (Copenhagen Consensus Center, Hoover Institution at Stanford, Copenhagen Business School) gives a clear provenance that buyers can cite internally. Biography highlights President and founder, Copenhagen Consensus Center. Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Visiting Professor, Copenhagen Business School. Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, False Alarm, and Best Things First. Named to TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (2004); Top 100 Global Thinker, Foreign Policy (2011, 2012). Biography Most climate and development debate is framed as moral argument. Lomborg’s career has been spent reframing it as an allocation problem. Through the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which he founded and leads, he works with more than 300 economists, including seven Nobel laureates, to rank global interventions by cost and benefit rather than by political attention. That method produced the thesis running through his published work. The Skeptical Environmentalist, published by Cambridge University Press in 2001, argued that many accepted environmental narratives did not match the data. Cool It and False Alarm, the latter from Basic Books in 2020, applied the same analytic discipline to climate policy. Best Things First, published in 2023, ranks twelve interventions by expected human and economic return and was named a Best Book of 2023 by The Economist. His institutional base reflects the seriousness of the work. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen, is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School. TIME Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2004. Foreign Policy placed him on its Top 100 Global Thinkers list in 2011 and again in 2012. Lomborg is a contested figure in climate debate, and boards hire him knowing that. The value is a disciplined, published, defensible argument that forces leadership teams to compare what they are spending on sustainability with what that spend actually delivers. Key speaking topics Cost-benefit analysis in climate and development policy Climate economics and capital allocation Global development priorities and the Sustainable Development Goals Evidence-based policymaking ESG and sustainability trade-offs Long-horizon risk and resource allocation Ideal for Board and executive audiences reviewing climate and ESG capital allocation Chief sustainability officers and chief risk officers working through net-zero trade-offs Investment committees and asset owners stress-testing climate assumptions Policy, philanthropy, and development leaders ranking interventions under fixed budgets Audience outcomes A clear framework for comparing climate and development interventions by measurable return, not political profile. A working vocabulary for challenging internal ESG and sustainability spending claims. Exposure to the Copenhagen Consensus ranking method and how it has been applied to real policy choices. A more defensible position when boards are asked how their climate capital is justified.

Why organisations work with Bert Rürup He has held the top advisory seat in German economics. As chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts from 2005 to 2009, he advised the federal government on the macroeconomic questions boards now face in their own planning. His work is embedded in German statute. The “Rürup Commission” he chaired set the path for raising the statutory retirement age to 67, and the Rürup-Rente pension product is named after him. He runs an active research platform. As President of the Handelsblatt Research Institute since 2013 and Chief Economist of Handelsblatt since 2017, he produces a continuous read on European macro conditions that boards can pressure-test against their own assumptions. He connects demographics to the balance sheet. Few speakers translate pension, healthcare, and labour-supply shifts into the fiscal and wage-cost consequences that actually show up in corporate plans. Biography highlights Chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts, 2005-2009. Chairman of the 2002-2003 federal commission on the long-term financing of pension, health and long-term care insurance, known as the Rürup Commission. President of the Handelsblatt Research Institute since 2013; Chief Economist of Handelsblatt since 2017. Former Professor of Economics at Darmstadt University of Technology, with earlier chairs at the University of Essen. Chairman of the Social Advisory Council for Pension Insurance, 2000-2009. Recipient of the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Biography Germany’s pension architecture, labour supply, and fiscal outlook have been reshaped over the last two decades by a small number of expert commissions. Bert Rürup chaired the most consequential of them. The 2002-2003 federal commission he led on pensions, health and long-term care recommended the gradual rise of the statutory retirement age to 67, and gave its name to the Rürup-Rente, the state-subsidised private pension introduced in 2005. From 2005 to 2009 he chaired the German Council of Economic Experts, the country’s senior macroeconomic advisory body to the federal government. Before and after that role he sat on the Social Advisory Council for Pension Insurance, and on the Pension Reform Commission under Federal Minister Walter Riester. For boards trying to read German and European macro signals, the point is simple: he has been inside the rooms where those signals were shaped. Since 2013 he has led the Handelsblatt Research Institute, the research arm of Germany’s leading business daily, and since 2017 has been its Chief Economist. That platform keeps his work in weekly circulation among European senior management and investors, and gives corporate audiences a direct line into the macro debate as it is happening. His academic foundation sits at Darmstadt University of Technology, where he held a chair in economics, and earlier at the University of Essen. He holds an honorary doctorate and has been awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his contribution to German economic policy. Key speaking topics German and European macroeconomic outlook Pension systems and the future of the welfare state Demographic change and its fiscal consequences Labour markets and workforce supply in Europe Public finance and fiscal policy The future of work in an ageing Europe Ideal for Boards and executive committees planning multi-year capital and workforce commitments in Europe CFOs, heads of reward, and pensions trustees reassessing long-term benefit liabilities Senior policy and government relations leaders in financial services, insurance, and industrial groups Investor conferences and strategy offsites that need a credible German macro view Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where German and European macro conditions are heading over the medium term A concrete sense of how demographic and pension policy shifts translate into labour cost and tax exposure Language senior audiences can use internally to talk about fiscal and welfare-state risk A view from inside the policy apparatus, not a commentator’s view of it

Why organisations work with Anthony Hilton Five decades inside the City press, from trainee on The Guardian in 1968 to City Editor of The Times and the Evening Standard, give audiences a working memory of how UK financial crises, regulatory shifts and market cycles actually play out. A named position of record. As Senior Commentator for The Independent and The Standard his arguments on markets, pensions and the economy are already in public circulation, so organisations get a writer whose views are testable. Specific authority on pensions and long-term savings, an area he has covered as a weekly columnist for more than 30 years and on which he has been singled out by UK pensions industry awards. A track record of calling the 2008 crash, recognised by the University of Aberdeen with an honorary degree in 2010 for articles from 2005 to 2007 warning that the financial system was heading for trouble. Deep fluency in corporate and financial communication, drawn from his book How to Communicate Financial Information to Employees and a career running the editorial operation at the Evening Standard as Managing Director. Biography highlights Senior Commentator for The Independent and The London Standard, writing on markets, pensions, investor relations and the economy. Former City Editor of The Times (1981 to 1983) and City Editor of the Evening Standard (1984 to 1989), then Managing Director of the Evening Standard from 1989. Author of City Within a State: A Portrait of Britain’s Financial World, a study of how the City of London really works. Wincott Prize for Business Journalism; Business Journalist of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Financial Journalism at the 2014 ABI Financial Media Awards; Association of British Insurers Commentator of the Year (twice); Decade of Excellence Award, World Press Awards, 2007. Honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen, 2010, for services to journalism, including articles from 2005 to 2007 predicting the financial crash; MA in Economics, University of Aberdeen. Joint founder and past non-executive chairman of Newsdesk Media Group; Visiting Professor in Economics at London Metropolitan University, 2010 to 2012; former Editor of Accountancy Age. Biography The 1970s sterling story, the 1980s Big Bang, the dotcom crash, the 2008 banking collapse and the pensions and inflation shocks since: the same journalist has covered them in real time for a general reader, inside the British national press. That continuity is unusual, and it is the reason senior audiences listen when Anthony Hilton explains what is happening in the City. He joined Fleet Street in 1968 as a trainee on The Guardian, moved to New York in 1978 as Business Correspondent for the Sunday Times, and returned in 1981 to become City Editor of The Times. From 1984 he was City Editor of the Evening Standard, then its Managing Director from 1989, before returning to writing. He is now Senior Commentator for The Independent and The London Standard. The published argument is the other half of the case. City Within a State set out how the City of London actually works as a system of firms, regulators and capital flows. How to Communicate Financial Information to Employees codified what he has observed boards and finance chiefs get wrong when talking about money to their own people. His weekly columns on pensions, investor relations and the economic outlook have run for more than 30 years. The recognition is from bodies that matter in the field. The Wincott Prize for Business Journalism, Business Journalist of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Financial Journalism at the 2014 ABI Financial Media Awards, and Commentator of the Year from the Association of British Insurers, twice. The University of Aberdeen awarded him an honorary degree in 2010 in recognition of columns from 2005 to 2007 that warned the financial system was heading for serious trouble. Key speaking topics UK economic outlook and policy City of London, markets and investor relations Pensions, long-term savings and retirement policy Corporate governance and financial communication Financial journalism and the media view of business Economic history and lessons from past UK financial crises Ideal for Boards and CEOs in financial services, asset management, insurance and pensions needing an informed macro and markets read CFOs, heads of investor relations and corporate communications teams preparing for scrutiny from the City press Pensions trustees, scheme sponsors and providers running strategy or member communication programmes Conferences and industry dinners needing a senior City commentator as host, moderator or after-dinner speaker Audience outcomes A clearer read on how UK economic policy, Bank of England decisions and market conditions intersect with their own sector A working columnist’s view on how the City press is interpreting their industry and their company Named historical reference points for making sense of current market and pensions stress A sharper frame on pensions and long-term savings policy for employers and trustees An argument on where the UK economy is heading and what that implies for strategy and communication

Why organisations work with Andrew Sheng He has sat inside the institutions most leaders only read about. Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, World Bank, and as Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission. He speaks from the regulator’s chair, not the commentator’s. His book From Asian to Global Financial Crisis (Cambridge University Press) is the standard insider account of how the 1997 Asian crisis and the 2008 global crisis share common causes. Boards use his framing to stress-test their own assumptions about financial stability. He is one of a very small group of Western-trained economists with direct, ongoing advisory access to Chinese financial policymakers. For organisations exposed to China, that is a perspective almost impossible to replicate. TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013 for helping leaders understand the rebalancing of the global economy. His Project Syndicate and South China Morning Post columns remain a reference point for finance ministers and institutional investors. He translates technical finance into strategic language. Boards come away with a clearer view of what Chinese shadow banking, sustainable finance, and US-China capital tensions mean for their own capital allocation. Biography highlights Chairman, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, 1998 to 2005 Deputy Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Adviser, China Banking Regulatory Commission (later China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission) Distinguished Fellow, Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong Author, From Asian to Global Financial Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2009); co-editor, Shadow Banking in China (Wiley, 2016) Named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People, 2013 Featured interviewee in the Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Job (2010) Pro-Chancellor, University of Bristol; columnist, Project Syndicate and South China Morning Post Biography The 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global crisis were not separate events. They shared the same causes: loose money, lax supervision, market fundamentalism, and an appetite for financial engineering that outran the regulators watching it. Andrew Sheng made that argument from inside the system, as a regulator who had watched both crises unfold from Asian capitals and Washington. His career is the reason the argument carries weight. He chaired the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission from 1998 to 2005, served as Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, spent four years at the World Bank, and began his career at Bank Negara Malaysia. Since 2013 he has been Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, giving him an active seat inside the policy apparatus shaping the world’s second-largest financial system. That access sits alongside a serious body of written work. From Asian to Global Financial Crisis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, remains a standard insider account of how unfettered finance produced two systemic shocks in a decade. Shadow Banking in China, co-edited for Wiley in 2016, is one of the few book-length treatments of Chinese off-balance-sheet finance written by authors with direct regulatory knowledge. His Project Syndicate column, running since 2011, is read by finance ministers and institutional investors. For boards exposed to Asia, the value is specific. Sheng does not describe China from the outside or financial regulation in the abstract. He explains how Beijing’s policymakers think about capital, what Western assumptions about Chinese finance tend to miss, and where the global monetary order is most likely to fracture next. TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013 for doing exactly this work. Key speaking topics Global financial stability and systemic risk China’s financial system and policy direction US-China economic and financial decoupling Asian capital markets and cross-border flows Central banking and financial regulation Sustainable finance and green capital The future of the international monetary order Ideal for Boards and investment committees with material exposure to Asian markets Central banks, financial regulators, and ministries of finance CIOs, CFOs, and treasurers at global financial institutions Policy, strategy, and sovereign wealth audiences evaluating China and the multilateral order Audience outcomes A regulator’s read on where the next systemic shock is most likely to originate A more accurate mental model of how Chinese financial policy is made and what it prioritises Sharper questions to ask about counterparty, currency, and capital-flow risk in Asia A structured way to think about sustainable finance beyond disclosure and taxonomy debates Language for the board on what decoupling, sanctions, and capital-market fragmentation mean for strategy

Why organisations work with Andrés Velasco He ran Chile’s fiscal policy through a commodity supercycle and a global financial crisis – banking windfall reserves against political opposition, then deploying them as counter-cyclical stimulus. This is not a case study; it is his direct personal record, and it has no equivalent among academic economists in the speaker market. His analysis of fiscal and monetary decisions is shaped by actual exposure to the institutional mechanics: as a minister, as a member of the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance, and as a current member of the Group of Thirty – a grouping that includes sitting and former central bank governors and finance ministers. He provides the connection between macro numbers and political reality that standard economic commentary does not: why governments make the fiscal choices they do, what constrains them, and what that means for the investment and operating environments businesses face. His Project Syndicate column, running since 2001, covers geopolitics, populism, and macroeconomic policy – offering audiences a track record of real-time, named analysis they can assess rather than a credentials summary alone. As Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy, he sits at the centre of the global debate on institutional reform, multilateral development finance, and the future of international economic governance – giving organisations access to the live intellectual agenda, not yesterday’s consensus. Biography highlights Inaugural Dean of the School of Public Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science (since 2018) Minister of Finance, Republic of Chile, 2006–2010; named Latin American Finance Minister of the Year by Emerging Markets (Euromoney) and América Economía Member of the Group of Thirty – the selective forum of current and former central bank governors, finance ministers, and senior economists Member, G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance; World Bank–IMF High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth Previously Sumitomo-FASID Professor of International Finance and Development, Harvard Kennedy School; Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs Award for Excellence in Research, Inter-American Development Bank (2006); author of nearly 100 academic articles and several books; regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2001 CEPR Research Fellow; Co-chair, Global Panel on the Future of the Multilateral Lending Institutions Biography Fiscal policy looks technical until a government has to choose between spending a commodity windfall and saving it. When Chile’s copper revenues surged in 2006, Andrés Velasco – then Finance Minister – held the reserves despite intense domestic political pressure, building buffers equivalent to roughly 30% of GDP. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, he deployed them. The FT, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg all covered the story. It remains the most concrete demonstration of counter-cyclical fiscal discipline under real political constraints in the modern emerging-market record. That combination – academic rigour in macroeconomics and direct exposure to the decisions that actually get made – shapes everything Velasco now does at LSE, where he is the inaugural Dean of the School of Public Policy. His research has always been about the political economy of reform: not what good policy looks like in theory, but why it succeeds or fails in practice, and what institutional conditions make credible commitments possible. These are the questions that boards and executive teams face when they try to read fiscal environments, assess sovereign risk, or understand why the same policy recommendation produces different outcomes in different countries. Velasco’s engagement with global economic governance has been sustained and specific. He served on the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance, co-chaired the Global Panel on the Future of the Multilateral Lending Institutions, and contributed to the World Bank–IMF High-Level Advisory Group on Sustainable and Inclusive Recovery and Growth. He is now a member of the Group of Thirty – one of the most selective forums in international economic policy, comprising current and former central bank governors and finance ministers. His Project Syndicate column, published continuously since 2001, provides a public record of his analytical positions on populism, fiscal discipline, multilateralism, and democratic governance. For organisations navigating a period in which fiscal policy has become explicitly political and multilateral institutions are under visible strain, Velasco offers something precise: the perspective of someone who has held the levers, studied the mechanisms, and continued to influence the debate at the highest institutional levels. Key speaking topics Political economy of fiscal policy and economic reform Global economic governance and multilateral institutions Counter-cyclical fiscal policy and sovereign risk Macroeconomics of emerging markets Populism, democracy, and economic policymaking International financial institutions and development finance Geopolitical risk and global market conditions Ideal for C-suite and board-level audiences in financial services, investment, and multinational corporations requiring strategic context on global fiscal and political risk Chief Strategy Officers and Chief Risk Officers navigating geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty Government affairs, public policy, and regulatory strategy teams International economic forums, sovereign wealth funds, and development finance institutions Audience outcomes A clearer framework for reading fiscal and monetary policy decisions as political acts with structural constraints – not just technical outputs Specific insight into how multilateral institutions form, reform, and fail – and what that means for the economic environments businesses depend on Context for understanding the gap between policy intent and policy outcome in emerging and developed markets A more precise vocabulary for discussing sovereign risk, counter-cyclical strategy, and institutional credibility at board level Exposure to the live intellectual debate on global economic governance from someone actively shaping it

Why organisations work with Anatole Kaletsky He runs the macro research that institutional investors act on. As chairman and chief economist of Gavekal, his work is priced in by hundreds of banks, asset managers and corporates, not written for a general audience. He wrote the book on post-crisis capitalism. Capitalism 4.0 set out a named thesis for how the system reorganised itself after 2008, and the argument has aged into the framework through which many boards now read central bank behaviour. He sits inside the reform of economics itself. As founding chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, set up with George Soros to rebuild the discipline after 2008, he has direct access to the researchers redefining how policymakers think. Thirty years as Economics Editor and Editor-at-Large of The Times, and as a columnist for Reuters, the International New York Times and Project Syndicate, give him a rare ability to translate macro complexity into arguments a management team can act on. Biography highlights Co-founder, chairman and chief economist of Gavekal, an independent research and investment firm serving more than 800 financial institutions. Founding chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, established with George Soros in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Author of Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Columnist for Reuters, the International New York Times, Project Syndicate and Prospect, after a thirty-year career at The Economist, the Financial Times and The Times, where he was Economics Editor and Editor-at-Large. Twice named Specialist Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards, and named Newspaper Commentator of the Year, Economic Journalist of the Year and European Journalist of the Year. First Class Honours in Mathematics from King’s College, Cambridge, and a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard, where he took a Master’s in Economics. Biography The global economy has not returned to a normal cycle since 2008. Successive shocks, from the financial crisis to the pandemic to the rewiring of trade blocs, have left boards and investors trying to plan inside a macro regime whose rules they did not agree to. Kaletsky’s work is an attempt to name that regime. In Capitalism 4.0, he argued that the post-crisis system is a new stage in the evolution of market economies, one in which governments and central banks play a larger and more explicit role, and that treating the period since 2008 as a set of anomalies is what keeps leaders wrong-footed. The thesis gave boards and policymakers a vocabulary for what they were already seeing. That argument is backed by an unusual combination. Through Gavekal, the research and investment firm he co-founded, his analysis is priced in by more than 800 banks, asset managers and corporates. Through the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which he chaired from its founding with George Soros, he works with the economists rebuilding the discipline’s foundations. Through three decades at The Times, the Financial Times and The Economist, and ongoing columns for Reuters, the International New York Times and Project Syndicate, he has learned how to explain monetary policy and geopolitics without losing either the numbers or the reader. For a board trying to decide what to assume about inflation, Chinese growth, the dollar or the direction of American policy, his value is that he has already had to answer the same question for institutional clients who are putting real capital behind it. Key speaking topics Global macro-economics and financial markets Central bank policy and the future of monetary regimes Capitalism 4.0 and the evolution of market economies after 2008 Geopolitics, trade blocs and the global economic order China, the United States and the shape of the next decade Political risk and the interaction of policy with markets Ideal for Boards and executive committees setting medium-term capital allocation and geographic strategy Chief investment officers, CFOs and treasurers calibrating exposure to policy and macro risk Institutional investor conferences and client events that need a named macro thesis, not a market update Audience outcomes A clearer reading of why the post-2008 macro regime behaves differently, and what that means for planning assumptions A framework for interpreting central bank decisions as part of a longer structural shift, not one-off interventions A sharper view of how US-China rivalry, European policy and emerging market dynamics interact in capital flows Specific, argued positions on inflation, interest rates and asset prices, rather than a survey of consensus forecasts

Why organisations work with Alex Brummer Five decades of front-line financial reporting, from the 1976 sterling crisis to the 2008 banking collapse to the post-Brexit settlement, give audiences a working memory of how financial crises actually unfold. A named position of record. As City Editor of the Daily Mail he writes the paper’s daily view on business, markets and the economy, which means organisations get an author whose arguments are already in public circulation. Book-length theses backed by serious publishers. Bad Banks on financial system fragility and The Great British Reboot (Yale University Press, 2020) on UK economic strategy give audiences a coherent argument, not a survey. Specific expertise on pensions and long-term savings, the subject of The Great Pensions Robbery, which matters to any organisation running a material defined benefit liability or rethinking retirement provision. Award weight from credible bodies: Wincott Senior Financial Journalist of the Year, British Press Awards Financial Journalist of the Year, Overseas Press Club of New York for US coverage. Biography highlights City Editor of the Daily Mail since May 2000, writing the paper’s daily commentary on business, markets and the economy. 26 years at The Guardian in senior roles including US Financial and Washington Correspondent, Financial Editor, Foreign Editor and Associate Editor. Author of seven books including The Great British Reboot (Yale University Press, 2020), Bad Banks (2014), Britain for Sale (2012) and The Great Pensions Robbery (2011). Wincott Prize for Senior Financial Journalist of the Year (2001); British Press Awards Financial Journalist of the Year (1999); Overseas Press Club of New York (1989). Honorary Doctor of the University, University of Bradford (2014). Columnist for New Statesman; contributor to The Spectator and Jewish Chronicle; chair of the Jewish News editorial board. Biography The 1976 sterling crisis, the 2008 banking collapse and the post-Brexit argument over UK industrial strategy have one thing in common. The same journalist covered them from inside a working newsroom, in real time, for a general reader. Since May 2000, that newsroom has been the Daily Mail, where Alex Brummer is City Editor. The role means writing the paper’s daily view on business, markets and the economy, turning movement in the FTSE, the Bank of England and global capital markets into a clear argument rather than a data dump. Before that he spent 26 years at The Guardian, including ten years as US Financial and Washington Correspondent covering three presidential elections, then Financial Editor, Foreign Editor and Associate Editor. The books map the territory he speaks from. Bad Banks (2014) traced the post-2008 banking system’s unresolved fragility. Britain for Sale (2012) set out the costs of foreign ownership of British industrial assets. The Great Pensions Robbery (2011) examined the unwinding of UK retirement provision. The Great British Reboot, published by Yale University Press in 2020, argues how the UK can rebuild economic strength through research, technology and industrial reform. The recognition is from bodies that matter in the field: the Wincott Prize for Senior Financial Journalist of the Year, the British Press Awards for Financial Journalist of the Year, and the Overseas Press Club of New York for best foreign correspondent in the United States. Bradford awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2014. Key speaking topics UK economic outlook and industrial policy Banking stability and systemic financial risk Pensions, savings and long-term capital Foreign ownership of UK assets and national economic security Global markets and macroeconomic trends Post-Brexit economic strategy Ideal for Boards and CEOs in financial services, asset management and banking needing an informed macro read alongside strategic decisions CFOs and treasury leaders exposed to rate, currency and pensions risk Policy forums, regulators and industry bodies across financial services, infrastructure and pensions Conferences needing a City Editor-grade host or moderator across business, economics and markets Audience outcomes A clearer read on how UK economic policy, banking regulation and market conditions intersect with their own sector Named historical reference points, from the 1976 sterling crisis to 2008 and beyond, for interpreting current financial stress A sharper frame on the pensions and long-term savings question facing UK employers A working journalist’s view on what is actually driving coverage and sentiment around their industry An argument, not a survey, on where the UK economy is heading and what that implies for strategy