Economic Trends & Global Markets

Why organisations work with Sir Howard Davies He is the only person to have both designed the UK’s single financial regulatory architecture – merging nine agencies into the FSA between 1997 and 2003 – and then governed a major commercial bank as its chair. That double vantage point is not replicable by any other speaker in this space. His 2022 book The Chancellors (Polity Press), based on direct interviews with UK Chancellors of the Exchequer, provides boards with a forensic account of how fiscal and monetary policy decisions are actually made under political constraint – directly relevant to any organisation calibrating its exposure to policy risk. He maintains current, published views on global regulatory fragmentation, ESG retreat in financial services, and the direction of financial supervision through his Project Syndicate column and Financial Times contributions – his perspective is live, not retrospective. His tenure as Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry gives him a period in his career where he represented the commercial case in dialogue with regulators and government – meaning he understands regulatory negotiation from the business side as well as the supervisory side. As Chair of Inigo Limited at Lloyd’s of London and a member of a Chinese securities regulatory advisory council, he brings active, multi-jurisdictional board-level experience to questions about how regulatory divergence is reshaping global financial markets. Biography highlights Founding Chairman, UK Financial Services Authority (1997-2003) – created the UK’s single financial regulator by merging nine separate agencies Deputy Governor, Bank of England (1995-1997) Chair, NatWest Group (2015-2024) Director, London School of Economics and Political Science (2003-2011) Professor of Practice, Sciences Po, Paris – teaches financial regulation and central banking at master’s level Six published books on finance and economic policy, including Banking on the Future (Princeton University Press, 2010) and The Chancellors (Polity Press, 2022) Regular contributor to Project Syndicate and the Financial Times Director-General, Confederation of British Industry (1992-1995) Chair, UK Airports Commission (2012-2015) Knight Bachelor (2000) Biography Financial regulation is not a technical discipline that sits at the edge of the boardroom. It is a political process that reshapes the commercial options available to every regulated institution – and boards that treat it as a compliance matter, rather than a strategic one, tend to be late to the table when the framework shifts. Sir Howard Davies has operated at the centre of that process for three decades. As founding Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority, he created the country’s single financial regulator from scratch between 1997 and 2003, merging nine separate agencies into one body. That work – designing supervisory architecture under political instruction, negotiating between commercial interests and public mandates – gives him a form of institutional authority that no amount of academic or advisory work can replicate. His earlier role as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and his preceding three years as Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry, adds the monetary policy and business lobby dimensions to a perspective that is genuinely triangulated across the full regulatory relationship. From 2015 to 2024 he served as Chair of NatWest Group, guiding the bank through a nine-year transformation from a state-aided institution to a commercially independent one. Governance under political scrutiny, board accountability in a regulated environment, and reputational risk in real time are not abstractions in his work – they are operational experience. His six published books, among them The Chancellors (Polity Press, 2022), based on direct interviews with UK Chancellors of the Exchequer, bring the same analytical rigour to economic policymaking that his regulatory career brought to financial supervision. He is currently Chair of Inigo Limited at Lloyd’s of London, a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and Professor of Practice at Sciences Po in Paris, where he teaches financial regulation and central banking. For boards in regulated sectors trying to read the direction of travel in financial supervision – across jurisdictions, not just domestically – his vantage point is without direct equivalent. Key speaking topics Financial regulation and regulatory reform Banking governance and board oversight Central banking and monetary policy Economic policy and the role of the Treasury Regulatory risk and political risk in financial services Global financial markets and cross-border regulatory divergence ESG strategy in financial services Ideal for Boards and audit/risk committees in banks, insurers, and asset managers Financial regulators, policymakers, and supervisory bodies CHROs and general counsel in highly regulated sectors navigating governance reform Senior leaders in institutional investment and sovereign wealth management Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how financial regulatory frameworks are made and how they change under political pressure – not just what the current rules are Practical framing of the governance responsibilities that sit above compliance, drawn from direct board experience at a major UK bank Perspective on the direction of global regulatory divergence, including between US, EU, and UK supervisory approaches A more calibrated view of how monetary policy decisions interact with fiscal policy, and what that means for strategic planning in financial institutions Insight into how the regulator-board relationship works in practice – and where it typically breaks down

Why organisations work with Herman Van Rompuy He chaired the European Council through the sovereign debt crisis and can explain, from the inside, how decisions on the euro, the Fiscal Compact, and the European Stability Mechanism were actually brokered between 27 national capitals. He is a trained economist, not a career politician alone; his National Bank of Belgium background means he reads monetary policy, bank regulation and fiscal governance with technical fluency most former heads of state lack. His 2012 report to the European Council laid the blueprint for Banking Union; leaders get direct authorship perspective on the supervisory and resolution architecture their treasury and risk teams now operate inside. He remains plugged into the current debate as President of the Board of the College of Europe and Honorary President of the European Policy Centre, so the analysis is live, not a memoir. The Charlemagne Prize is awarded for mediation and consensus-building in Europe, which is precisely what he does on stage: he translates a 27-country bargaining dynamic into language a corporate board can act on. Biography highlights First full-time President of the European Council, 2009-2014, re-elected unanimously for a second term in 2012. Prime Minister of Belgium, 2008-2009; Speaker of the House of Representatives, 2007-2008; Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Budget, 1993-1999. Recipient of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, 2014. President of the Administrative Council of the College of Europe (Bruges); Honorary President of the European Policy Centre; visiting fellow at Bruegel. Author of nine books, including “Europe in the Storm: Promise and Prejudice” (Davidsfonds, 2014) on the eurozone crisis years. Holds a Master’s in Applied Economics from KU Leuven; former economist at the National Bank of Belgium. Biography When the euro came close to breaking apart in 2011 and 2012, the meetings that kept it together were chaired by one man. Herman Van Rompuy had taken up the newly created post of permanent President of the European Council in January 2010, and within months the Greek, Irish and Portuguese bailouts were on his desk. Over five years he presided over twenty-eight European Councils and eleven Euro summits, and emerged with the architecture that still governs the single currency. The substance of that period matters more than the title. Under his chairmanship the European Council agreed the European Stability Mechanism, the Fiscal Compact, and the Six-Pack and Two-Pack rules on national budgets. His June 2012 report, prepared with the Presidents of the Commission, the ECB and the Eurogroup, set out the blueprint for Banking Union; the Single Supervisory Mechanism and Single Resolution Mechanism followed. Companies doing business in Europe now operate inside the framework he helped draft. He came to the role as an economist first. A Master’s in Applied Economics from KU Leuven and an early career at the National Bank of Belgium gave him a fluency in monetary and fiscal detail that distinguishes him from most former heads of government. Belgian voters knew him as a technocratic budget minister in the 1990s before he became Prime Minister in the 2008 financial crisis, and he brought the same style to Brussels: quiet, methodical, consensus-driven. That approach has kept him inside the European debate. He is President of the Administrative Council of the College of Europe in Bruges, Honorary President of the European Policy Centre, and a visiting fellow at Bruegel. The International Charlemagne Prize, awarded in 2014, cited him as a mediator and driving force behind European unification, which is the working mode boards encounter when he sits with them on the state of the Union. Key speaking topics European Union governance and institutional reform Eurozone economic policy and monetary cooperation Banking Union and European financial stability Geopolitical risk in the European neighbourhood Crisis decision-making at heads-of-government level EU enlargement and the future of integration Belgium and the politics of coalition government Ideal for Boards and executive committees of firms with material euro-area exposure CFO and treasury leadership working under EU financial regulation Government affairs, strategy and political risk functions in multinationals Banking, insurance and asset management audiences operating inside Banking Union rules Audience outcomes A clearer read of how EU-level decisions are actually made between national capitals, institutions and the ECB A grounded view of where eurozone integration is heading and which political constraints are binding First-hand perspective on crisis leadership at the top of European politics Sharper framing of European political risk for board-level and investment committee discussions

Why organisations work with Harold James A historian’s answer to the question leaders actually ask in a crisis: is this 1973, 2008, or something new? The framework from Seven Crashes gives boards a way to test that judgement rather than guess. Institutional access earned as the IMF’s official historian, with a chair at Princeton since 1986. Few commentators on globalization sit this close to the machinery they write about. A published thesis, not a view of the week: supply-driven crises expand markets, demand-driven crises shrink them. It changes how leaders interpret inflation, tariffs, and capital controls. Track record with serious business readers, including the Financial Times Global Business Book Award for the Deutsche Bank history and an FT Best Politics Books selection for The War of Words. Biography highlights Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies, Princeton University; Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. Official historian of the International Monetary Fund. Author of Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalization (Yale University Press, 2023) and Making the European Monetary Union (Harvard University Press, 2012). Co-author of the authorised history of Deutsche Bank, winner of the Financial Times Global Business Book Award, 1996. Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History (2004); Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics (2005); Ellen McArthur Prize for Economic History, Cambridge. Monthly columnist for Project Syndicate; associate of Princeton’s Bendheim Center for Finance. Biography Seven crashes, from the 1840s depression to Covid-19, do not all mean the same thing. In Seven Crashes (Yale, 2023), Harold James splits them into crises of supply, which tend to expand markets, and crises of demand, which tend to contract them. That distinction is the working tool he brings into boardrooms. The intellectual base is Princeton, where James has held the Claude and Lore Kelly Chair in European Studies since joining the faculty in 1986. He is Professor of History and International Affairs at the School of Public and International Affairs and an associate of the Bendheim Center for Finance. Making the European Monetary Union (Harvard, 2012) remains a standard reference on how the euro was built and what it assumed about member-state behaviour. The institutional access is unusual. James is the official historian of the International Monetary Fund, which gives him a documented inside view of how the post-war financial order actually operated through each shock. His authorised history of Deutsche Bank won the Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1996. The War of Words, his glossary of globalization, was named to the Financial Times Best Politics Books of 2021. For corporate audiences the output is practical. A monthly Project Syndicate column tests his arguments against the news cycle. The Helmut Schmidt Prize (2004), Ludwig Erhard Prize (2005), and Cambridge’s Ellen McArthur Prize sit behind that record. When a risk committee is trying to decide whether tariffs, sanctions, or a monetary regime change is a shock or a structural shift, his Seven Crashes framework is a clean instrument for forcing that choice. Key speaking topics Globalization cycles and deglobalization Financial crises and crisis response European monetary union and the euro History of central banking Germany and the European economy International monetary and financial architecture Inflation, supply shocks, and political economy Ideal for Bank and asset manager boards setting multi-year macro and rate assumptions CROs, CFOs, and treasury leaders testing crisis playbooks against historical precedent Policy, regulatory, and central bank forums on monetary union and international finance Investor conferences and CEO summits addressing tariffs, sanctions, and the future of trade Audience outcomes A working distinction between supply-driven and demand-driven crises, with historical cases for each A sharper reading of current inflation, tariff, and capital-flow debates against the long record Perspective on the euro and European monetary policy from a historian who has written its formal history An IMF-informed view of how global financial institutions actually respond when the system is under stress

Why organisations work with Gunter Pauli He has run the experiment himself. As CEO of Ecover he built the first fully ecological factory in Malle, Belgium in 1992, and grew the business into a category-defining consumer brand before turning to systems work. The Blue Economy is a named, published framework, not a talk. The 2010 report to the Club of Rome catalogues 100 nature-inspired innovations with business cases attached, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. He sits inside the conversation that shapes long-range policy. Elected member of the Club of Rome and former executive committee member, with advisory roles for governments in Spain, Argentina, Italy and Bhutan. He converts sustainability from a cost line into a portfolio of revenue opportunities. The argument boards respond to: waste streams and local resources are unbooked revenue if you redesign around them. He founded and still leads ZERI, a working network of scientists and entrepreneurs testing zero-emissions business models in the field, which keeps the content grounded in what has actually been built. Biography highlights Founder of ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives), established in 1994 at the United Nations University in Tokyo. Former Chairman and CEO of Ecover, Belgium; led the design and launch of the Malle ecological factory in 1992. Author of The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs, commissioned as a report to the Club of Rome. Elected member of the Club of Rome; served on its executive committee. Recipient of the 2022 Goi Peace Award; honorary doctorate from the University of Pecs, Hungary. MBA, INSEAD Fontainebleau; economics, University of Antwerp. Biography Ecover was a detergent company when Gunter Pauli took it over in 1991. Four years later it was a global reference point for sustainable manufacturing, operating out of a wooden factory with a planted roof in Malle, Belgium, the first of its kind. The experience also taught him that a clean product built on palm oil was still destroying rainforest, and that the green movement of the early 1990s had not yet confronted the problem. That recognition is what produced the Blue Economy. Working from the United Nations University in Tokyo, Pauli founded ZERI in 1994 to test a different premise: that natural systems already solve most of the problems industry struggles with, and that redesigning around local resources and cascading waste streams produces better economics, not worse. The 2010 report to the Club of Rome set out 100 worked examples, from coffee-to-mushroom cultivation to stone paper, each with a business case. The framework has travelled. The Blue Economy has been translated into more than 30 languages, taught on MBA and policy programmes, and picked up by governments in Europe, Latin America and Asia as a basis for regional development strategy. Pauli was elected to the Club of Rome and served on its executive committee from 2017, and received the Goi Peace Award in 2022. What he brings to a senior audience is a practitioner’s account of how environmental and financial returns can be made to move together, with a portfolio of cases that have been built, sold and scaled. The argument is not that sustainability is a duty. It is that most industrial processes are inefficient on their own terms, and the companies that notice first will take the margin. Key speaking topics The Blue Economy Nature-inspired business model design Zero emissions manufacturing and circular supply chains Sustainable entrepreneurship Regional development and resource strategy ESG strategy and corporate sustainability Systems thinking for leaders Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and board directors setting sustainability and capital allocation strategy Heads of innovation, R&D and operations rethinking product and factory design Government and public-sector leaders shaping regional development and industrial policy Investor audiences evaluating circular and regenerative business models Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Blue Economy framework and how it differs from recycling, offsetting and conventional CSR Named examples of companies and regions that have used nature-inspired design to cut cost and emissions at the same time A sharper lens for spotting waste streams and local resources that can be turned into revenue Language to use with boards and investors when sustainability investments have to compete for capital A reading of where sustainability policy and markets are heading over the next decade, drawn from Club of Rome and government advisory work

Why organisations work with Graeme Leach A working forecaster, not a commentator. Two decades as Chief Economist at the Institute of Directors and earlier at the Henley Centre for Forecasting give him a record of calling macro turning points for business audiences before they show up in headlines. One of the few UK economists who connects monetary policy, geopolitics, and long-horizon demographics in a single argument. His “The RACE” keynote forces leadership teams to think about technology adoption and demographic decline as the same strategic problem. A senior policy voice, not just a market voice. Membership of the IEA Shadow Monetary Policy Committee and the Legatum Institute senior fellowship put him inside the UK debate on interest rates, productivity, and prosperity, which matters to boards making capital allocation calls. Built for serious audiences. Nearly 1,000 keynotes in 25 countries, including Royal Albert Hall scale, with a reputation for making complex macro intelligible to non-economists in the room. Biography highlights CEO and Chief Economist, macronomics, a macroeconomic, geopolitical and future megatrends research consultancy founded in 2016. Chief Economist and Director of Policy, Institute of Directors, 1997 to 2014, and a main board director. Senior Fellow, Legatum Institute, and former Director of Economics and Prosperity Studies. Member, IEA Shadow Monetary Policy Committee. Weekly columnist, City AM. Former Chief UK and International Economist, The Henley Centre for Forecasting. Regular contributor on BBC News, Sky News, BBC Radio 4 Today and World at One. Almost 1,000 keynotes delivered across 25 countries. Biography The macroeconomic backdrop business leaders operate against has stopped being a single curve and become a set of intersecting ones. Interest rates, inflation, geopolitical risk, demographic decline, and the productivity story behind AI now move together. Boards need a forecaster who can read them as one system. That is the job Graeme Leach has done for UK business for more than two decades. As Chief Economist and Director of Policy at the Institute of Directors from 1997 to 2014, he was the macroeconomic voice for thousands of UK directors through the dotcom cycle, the financial crisis, and the early years of the post-2008 recovery. Before that he was Chief UK and International Economist at the Henley Centre for Forecasting, one of the original commercial forecasting houses in London. In 2016 he founded macronomics, where he advises corporate and institutional clients on global outlook, geopolitical risk, and the megatrends that sit underneath them. The work is reinforced by a Senior Fellowship at the Legatum Institute, a seat on the IEA Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, and a weekly City AM column, giving him a continuous read on UK monetary policy and prosperity debates. His signature keynote, “The RACE for economic supremacy in the 21st century”, argues that the advanced economies are racing to capture the productivity gains of technology before demographic decline erodes growth. It is the kind of argument that connects what a CFO sees on the rate curve to what a CHRO sees in the workforce data. Across nearly 1,000 engagements in 25 countries, the reputation is consistent: he makes the complicated sound simple without making it sound small. Key speaking topics Global economic outlook UK economic outlook and monetary policy Geopolitical risk Demographic change and productivity Future megatrends Brexit and UK political economy Long-run scenarios for the world economy Ideal for Board and ExCo strategy offsites setting capital allocation under macro uncertainty CFO and treasury audiences planning against rate, inflation, and currency cycles Industry conferences and corporate client events needing a senior macro voice After-dinner and keynote slots where a serious economist must hold a non-specialist room Audience outcomes A coherent reading of the global and UK macro picture, with named risks rather than a checklist A clear view of how demography, technology, and geopolitics interact over a 10 to 20 year horizon A grounded position on UK interest rates, inflation, and growth from inside the policy debate Specific implications for capital allocation, workforce planning, and international exposure

Why organisations work with George Papandreou He ran a G20 economy through the most acute phase of the eurozone crisis. His account of negotiating with the IMF, ECB and European Commission is operational, not theoretical. He has held the two roles that shape Greek and European foreign policy, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, giving him an unusual horizontal view of how European institutions actually decide. As President of the Socialist International for 16 years, he built and maintained relationships with heads of government across more than a hundred parties worldwide, which informs how he reads political risk outside Europe. His current Council of Europe role as General Rapporteur on Democracy puts him inside the live work on democratic backsliding across 46 member states, not commenting on it from outside. He brings a specific, named thesis on the eurozone, that the architecture is unfinished and that the political legitimacy of monetary union is the real binding constraint, and is willing to argue it on the record. Biography highlights Prime Minister of Greece, October 2009 to November 2011, through the first sovereign debt rescue inside the euro area. Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece, 1999 to 2004, the period of the Greek-Turkish diplomatic opening. President of the Socialist International, 2006 to 2022; now President Emeritus. General Rapporteur on Democracy, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, with PACE adopting his June 2024 report on participatory and deliberative democracy. Fellow, Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs (1992 to 1993) and Institute of Politics (Fall 2012); led the IOP study group “(Re)designing Europe”. Grand Cross decorations from Germany, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Finland and Sweden; TED Global 2013 speaker on democratic deficit and trust. Biography Greece reached the edge of default inside the euro in 2010. The government that called the IMF was led by George Papandreou, who took office in October 2009 with a public finance hole that nobody on the European side had priced in. The decisions made in the following 24 months, on austerity, on bondholder participation, on whether the eurozone would let a member state fail, shaped a decade of European economic policy. Papandreou had reached that chair through a long political career. He had been Foreign Minister from 1999 to 2004, the period associated with the Greek-Turkish rapprochement, and President of PASOK from 2004. From 2006 to 2022 he was President of the Socialist International, which gave him direct working relationships with heads of government and party leaders across more than a hundred countries. His current work is at the Council of Europe, where he is General Rapporteur on Democracy for the Parliamentary Assembly. In June 2024 PACE adopted his report calling on member states to strengthen participatory and deliberative processes, a substantive technical agenda rather than rhetorical concern about democratic decline. He has paired this with academic work at Harvard, including the Institute of Politics study group “(Re)designing Europe”, and earlier as a Fellow at the Center for International Affairs. For boards and executive audiences, the value is specificity. He can describe how the Eurogroup made decisions in the early hours of a Monday morning, why the political economy of monetary union remains the binding constraint on European integration, and how participatory democratic reforms now under negotiation will change the regulatory environment that companies face across Europe. Key speaking topics The eurozone, sovereign debt and the unfinished architecture of monetary union European political risk and the future of European integration Democratic backsliding and institutional reform in Europe Greece, Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean Crisis leadership at the level of national government Participatory and deliberative democracy Global governance and multilateral cooperation Ideal for Boards and executive committees with significant European exposure assessing political and sovereign risk Heads of public affairs and government relations working on EU institutional reform Investor audiences and capital allocators with euro area sovereign and equity positions Foreign policy and security forums focused on the eastern Mediterranean and Europe’s neighbourhood Audience outcomes A first-hand account of how a sovereign debt rescue inside the euro area was actually negotiated A reading of the political constraints that still sit underneath the euro and what could reopen them A view of which European democracies are most vulnerable to institutional erosion and why A clearer sense of how Council of Europe and EU-level democratic reforms will shape the operating environment A working framework for thinking about the link between economic shock, political legitimacy and policy

Why organisations work with Geoff Colvin Four decades of reporting inside Fortune on how the best-run companies actually change, not a consultant’s framework imported from outside the room. The thesis behind Talent Is Overrated, a WSJ, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, gives leadership teams a concrete answer to a question most duck: how do you actually build world-class performers instead of hoping you hire them. Humans Are Underrated reframes the AI conversation for executives. The argument is that empathy, group problem-solving and storytelling become the commercial differentiator, and it lands with boards that are tired of abstract automation talks. A career’s worth of on-stage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson at the Fortune Global Forum translates directly into panel moderation and onstage CEO interviews that audiences remember. Read in dozens of languages and heard daily on CBS Radio, he arrives with an unusual combination of reach and specificity that senior audiences trust on first encounter. Biography highlights Senior Editor-at-Large at Fortune, where he has written the Value Driven column and covered leadership, economics and competition for four decades. Author of Talent Is Overrated, Humans Are Underrated, The Upside of the Downturn, and co-author of Angel Customers and Demon Customers. The Upside of the Downturn named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. Former co-anchor of Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS. Daily business commentator on the CBS Radio Network, with more than 10,000 broadcasts. Lead moderator at the Fortune Global Forum, with onstage interviews of CEOs, heads of state and central bankers including Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Janet Yellen. Biography Most organisations say they want world-class performance, and most fund it with selection rather than development. Talent Is Overrated took that contradiction apart. Drawing on research into elite performers across sport, music, chess and business, Colvin argued that what separates the best is deliberate practice, the willingness to work at the edge of capability, under feedback, for years. The book became a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, and gave boards and chief people officers a language for building executive capability rather than buying it. Humans Are Underrated extended the argument into the automation decade. As machines absorbed more analytical and predictable work, Colvin’s case was that the commercial premium would shift to empathy, group problem-solving and persuasion, the deep human skills most leadership pipelines still treat as soft. Both books have shaped how serious HR and strategy functions think about what to develop in senior leaders. The credibility behind that writing is institutional. Colvin has spent his career at Fortune, currently as Senior Editor-at-Large, writing the Value Driven column and covering the forces reshaping competition. He co-anchored Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS, and has broadcast daily for CBS Radio with well over 10,000 segments on air. The Upside of the Downturn, his book on operating through recession, was named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. On stage, the work shows up differently. As lead moderator of the Fortune Global Forum he has conducted onstage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson, among many others. That experience is what corporate clients hire when they need a keynote that sets the terms of a CEO summit, or a moderator who can hold a room of chief executives to the substance. Key speaking topics Leadership in continuous disruption Executive performance and deliberate practice The human skills economy in an age of AI Business model reinvention Global economic outlook and competitive strategy Panel moderation and CEO onstage interviews Future of work and talent development Ideal for CEO, CHRO and chief learning officer audiences rethinking how senior leadership capability is built rather than bought. Boards and executive committees grappling with where automation leaves human advantage in their business model. Fortune-style CEO summits, leadership conferences and global forums that need a moderator with genuine authority across economics, technology and governance. Audience outcomes A defensible answer to how their organisation develops world-class performers, not just identifies them. A sharper read on which parts of the business automation makes cheaper, and which parts become more valuable as a result. Language for talking to boards and investors about human capability as a commercial asset, not an HR line item. Perspective from inside four decades of Fortune reporting on which leadership responses to disruption have actually worked.

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

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 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 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 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