Economic Trends & Global Markets

Why organisations work with Roger Bootle He runs the institutional view, not a commentator’s view. Capital Economics, which he founded in 1999, is one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, and senior leaders get the house perspective directly from the source. He has been right on inflation when the consensus was wrong. The Death of Inflation, published in 1996, called the structural fall in inflation a decade before central banks adjusted their thinking, and his subsequent inflation work continues to set the contrarian benchmark. He won the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize, the largest cash prize in economics after the Nobel, for the most credible plan to manage a eurozone exit. Boards exposed to euro-denominated risk get a serious answer, not a hot take. He sat for nearly two decades inside UK economic policymaking as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and as a member of the Chancellor’s “Wise Men” panel. He explains the policy process from the inside. The AI Economy, his Axiom Award-winning book, gives leadership teams a proper economic reading of AI: productivity, wages, employment and welfare, not vendor narrative. Biography highlights Founder of Capital Economics, an independent macroeconomic research consultancy, which he started in 1999 Former Group Chief Economist of HSBC; earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, 1998 to 2017 Member of the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the “Wise Men.” Winner, with the Capital Economics team, of the 2012 Wolfson Economics Prize for a eurozone exit plan Author of The Death of Inflation, The Trouble with Markets, Making a Success of Brexit, and The AI Economy (Gold, 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards) Weekly economics columnist for The Daily Telegraph; named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards 2012 Biography The Death of Inflation appeared in 1996 and argued that the inflationary regime built into Western economies since the 1970s was structurally finished. The book sold widely, was translated into nine languages, and became the reference point for a generation of contrarian inflation analysis. It also established its author as an economist willing to take a position years before the policy consensus caught up. That author is Roger Bootle. He founded Capital Economics in 1999 and built it into one of the largest independent macroeconomic research firms in the world, serving banks, asset managers, corporates, and policymakers. Before that, he was Group Chief Economist of HSBC, with earlier roles at Lloyds Bank and Capel-Cure Myers. His public-policy work runs in parallel. He served as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee from 1998 to 2017, and was appointed to the Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers known as the Wise Men. In 2012, he and a team from Capital Economics won the 250,000 pound Wolfson Economics Prize for the most credible plan to manage a country leaving the eurozone, and he was named Economics Commentator of the Year at The Comment Awards the same year. His more recent books extend the same approach to Brexit and AI. Making a Success of Brexit set out the economic conditions for the UK outside the EU. The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Robot, which won Gold at the 2020 Axiom Business Book Awards, treats artificial intelligence as a question about productivity, wages and welfare rather than a technology story. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph. Key speaking topics Global macroeconomic outlook Inflation and monetary policy Eurozone and European economic policy Brexit and the UK economy The economics of artificial intelligence Capital markets and the policy environment Long-run productivity and growth Ideal for Boards and investment committees setting capital allocation against a volatile macro backdrop CFOs, treasurers and CIOs in financial services and corporates with rate and currency exposure Asset management and private capital firms are briefing LPs on the macro outlook Senior policy and government-relations audiences working on UK, EU and monetary policy Audience outcomes A clear reading of where inflation, rates and growth are heading, and the reasoning behind it A direct view from one of the few economists with a public track record of contrarian calls that proved right A grounded economic framing of AI’s effect on productivity, employment and wages A working understanding of how UK and European economic policy is actually made, from someone who advised inside it A perspective on the eurozone and Brexit risk that buyers can defend in front of their own committees

Why organisations work with Robert Shiller He provides Nobel-level empirical authority on asset bubbles, housing cycles, and equity valuation, the questions a board faces when deciding whether to commit capital at the top of a cycle. He named the bubbles others missed. Irrational Exuberance warned of the dot-com peak in 2000 and the housing peak before the subprime crisis, both calls now in the public record. He gives leaders the indicators they can actually use, including the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and the CAPE ratio, both of which sit inside the standard toolkit of professional investors. His work on Narrative Economics gives boards a structured way to think about how stories move markets and consumer behaviour, which matters when sentiment shifts faster than fundamentals. He is one of the few macroeconomists who built behavioural finance into the mainstream, co-authoring Animal Spirits and Phishing for Phools with George Akerlof. Biography highlights Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and Fellow of the International Center for Finance at Yale School of Management. 2013 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences, shared with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen. Co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices and the Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio (CAPE / Shiller PE). Author of Irrational Exuberance, Narrative Economics, Animal Spirits, Phishing for Phools, Finance and the Good Society, and The New Financial Order. Regular Project Syndicate columnist and former New York Times “Economic View” columnist. Narrative Economics named a Financial Times Best Book of 2019. Biography Asset prices have a habit of detaching from fundamentals long before anyone calls it a bubble. The challenge for boards and investors is recognising the moment, separating durable conviction from collective story, and acting on it. That problem has defined Robert Shiller’s working life as an empirical economist. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale and a Fellow at the Yale School of Management International Center for Finance. The 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen, recognised his empirical analysis of asset prices, including the work showing that stock prices move far more than dividends justify. The implication for capital markets has shaped a generation of valuation thinking. His infrastructure sits inside the toolkit of serious investors. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, developed with Karl Case, became the reference series for US housing and the basis for CME futures. The Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio, built with John Campbell, gave equity investors a long-cycle valuation lens. Irrational Exuberance, first published in 2000, named the dot-com peak in real time and was updated to identify the housing bubble before the subprime crisis. The later work moved into territory most macroeconomists avoid. Animal Spirits and Phishing for Phools, both with George Akerlof, brought behavioural and psychological forces into mainstream macro. Narrative Economics, a Financial Times Best Book of 2019, made the case that the stories people tell each other about money and markets shape outcomes as much as the numbers do. For senior leaders, that is the practical question: which narratives are moving capital right now, and which ones are about to break. Key speaking topics Asset prices and market valuation Housing markets and price cycles Behavioural finance Narrative economics Bubbles and financial volatility Macroeconomic risk and forecasting Innovation in finance and risk management Ideal for Boards and investment committees making capital allocation decisions under cycle and valuation uncertainty CFOs, CIOs, and treasury leaders in banks, asset managers, and insurers Senior policymakers, central bank audiences, and regulators working on financial stability Real estate, mortgage, and housing finance leadership Audience outcomes A clearer read on where current asset prices sit relative to long-cycle valuation benchmarks like CAPE A working understanding of how narrative and sentiment translate into measurable market behaviour A sharper framework for spotting bubble dynamics before they reverse Behavioural finance applied to specific decisions on housing, equities, and credit Direct exposure to the empirical evidence behind Nobel-recognised work on asset pricing

Why organisations work with Robert Reich He has been both architect and analyst: cabinet-level policymaker under President Bill Clinton, and one of America’s most prolific public economists since the 1980s. Few speakers can read a regulatory environment from inside the cabinet room and from outside it, backed by three decades of published work. The “symbolic analysts” framework from The Work of Nations (1991), translated into 22 languages, was one of the earliest serious accounts of how globalisation stratifies labour markets. It anticipated the political and economic divisions now reshaping developed economies. He cuts through the false binary of “free market versus big government” that paralyses most boardroom debate on inequality and regulation. He shows that the real question is who the rules serve, and how that determines long-term commercial stability. Inequality Media’s videos and his daily Substack are read and watched by millions, including the political and policy actors whose decisions reshape corporate operating environments. That places him inside the conversation that shapes the political and regulatory climate executives plan around. For close to two decades he taught Berkeley’s largest undergraduate course in public policy, Wealth and Poverty. He brings that teaching ability into senior rooms, leaving audiences with a model they can apply directly to their own commercial environment. Biography highlights 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton (1993-1997), implementing the Family and Medical Leave Act, raising the federal minimum wage, and leading the federal fight against sweatshops and illegal child labour Named by TIME magazine as one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the 20th century, and ranked sixth on The Wall Street Journal’s list of Most Influential Business Thinkers (both 2008) Author of 18 books, including The Work of Nations (translated into 22 languages), Saving Capitalism, The Common Good, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley; recipient of the 2003 Václav Havel Foundation VIZE 97 Prize Co-creator with filmmaker Jacob Kornbluth of Inequality for All, winner of the US Documentary Special Jury Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and the 2017 Netflix original Saving Capitalism Columnist for The Guardian and Newsweek; co-founder of Inequality Media and the Economic Policy Institute; founding editor of The American Prospect magazine Biography Every market runs on rules: property, contract, bankruptcy, antitrust. Those rules are political artefacts, written by people with specific interests. The question of who writes them, and on whose behalf, has been the through-line of Robert Reich’s work for forty years. Reich served as the 22nd US Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. During that period he implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act, raised the federal minimum wage, and led the federal crackdown on sweatshops and illegal child labour. TIME magazine later named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His thinking did not start there. The Work of Nations, published in 1991 and translated into twenty-two languages, set out a thesis that has aged unusually well: globalisation was stratifying labour into three groups, with a minority of “symbolic analysts” capturing most of the gains while routine production and in-person service workers fell behind. The book named the divide that now drives political volatility across developed economies. Saving Capitalism (2015), the Netflix documentary of the same name, and the books that followed pushed the analysis into the politics of regulation: who writes the rules of property, contract, bankruptcy, and antitrust, and on whose behalf. The argument now places him in active conversation with senior policymakers and commercial leaders trying to read the political environment they operate in. His 2024 memoir Coming Up Short debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Key speaking topics Inequality and the future of capitalism Globalisation and the future of work US political economy and economic policy Regulation, antitrust and corporate power Authoritarian populism and democratic reform Labour markets and workforce policy Trade, tariffs and the global economy Ideal for Boards and executive teams in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, technology, energy) where political-economic conditions directly shape strategic options Senior policy and government affairs leaders trying to understand the political environment they are planning around Investor and asset management audiences assessing political risk in developed market economies Corporate convenings and leadership programmes setting commercial strategy against a longer political-economic horizon Audience outcomes A direct line drawn from current US political-economic conditions to the strategic decisions boards now face on regulation and long-term capital allocation An insider account of how the rules of property, contract, antitrust, and bankruptcy actually get written, and how those rules shape competitive position A historical comparison between the present moment and earlier US reform eras (the Progressive era, the New Deal), and the structural shifts each one produced The political-economic distinction between authoritarian populism and democratic reform, and what each path implies for the corporate operating environment

Why organisations work with Robert Peston He is one of a very small group of UK journalists who have held the top political and economic editorial roles at both the BBC and ITV, and senior banking and political roles at the Financial Times. Few speakers can map Westminster and the City from the inside in the same conversation. He broke the Northern Rock liquidity story in September 2007; the scoop Press Gazette ranks among the greatest in British journalism. Boards get a speaker who has personally reported the front edge of the UK financial crisis, not a commentator describing it. His co-authored 2024 book, How To Run Britain, sets out a specific reform programme for the UK economy and state. He arrives with a published thesis, not a generic talk. He brings a current, weekly read on the government, the opposition and the markets, drawn from his ITV programme Peston and the podcast The Rest Is Money. Briefings are framed for what leadership teams need to decide next quarter, not for general interest. He founded Speakers for Schools, now Futures For All, which has placed thousands of senior speakers into UK state schools. Organisations working with him are working with a journalist who has built an institution. Biography highlights ITV Political Editor and presenter of Peston on ITV. Former BBC Business Editor, 2006 to 2014, and BBC Economics Editor, 2014 to 2015. Former Financial Times Political Editor, Banking Editor and founder of the FT investigations unit. Co-host with Steph McGovern of The Rest Is Money, a leading UK business and economics podcast. Author of seven books, including Who Runs Britain?, WTF?, The Whistleblower and How To Run Britain (with Kishan Koria, 2024). Founder of Speakers for Schools, rebranded Futures For All in 2025. Royal Television Society Journalist of the Year, Specialist Journalist of the Year and twice winner of Scoop of the Year; Wincott Prize winner for financial journalism. Biography The Northern Rock emergency loan from the Bank of England was reported on the BBC on 13 September 2007. The reporter on the story was Robert Peston, then Business Editor of the BBC, and Press Gazette later listed the scoop as one of the greatest in British journalism. It is the moment that defined a career already deep inside UK banking and government. Peston’s editorial track record is unusually broad for a UK journalist. He has held the top business and economics roles at the BBC, the Political Editor and Banking Editor roles at the Financial Times, and now the Political Editor role at ITV, where he also presents the weekly programme Peston. With Steph McGovern, he co-hosts The Rest Is Money, one of the most-listened-to business podcasts in the UK. The published work matters. Seven books, including Who Runs Britain?, How Do We Fix This Mess?, WTF? and the 2024 reform programme, How To Run Britain, written with Kishan Koria, set out a clear and specific argument about how the British government, banking and public finances need to change. He is one of the few national broadcast journalists who has paired live reporting with a substantive policy thesis. Outside journalism, he founded Speakers for Schools, now Futures For All, which has placed senior business, political and cultural figures into thousands of UK state-school talks since 2010. The Royal Television Society named him Journalist of the Year and Specialist Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the credit crunch; he has also won the Wincott Prize for financial journalism. He is among the very few UK speakers who can describe the British political economy from inside the BBC, ITV, the FT and the Treasury press lobby. Key speaking topics UK political and economic outlook Westminster, government and policy direction Banking, financial regulation and financial crisis Public finances, tax and fiscal policy Inequality and the social contract in Britain Geopolitics and UK exposure Leadership in political and institutional reform Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting UK capital allocation, hiring and investment plans Banking, asset management and insurance leadership audiences Public affairs, policy and government relations leads Annual conferences seeking a senior, named UK political and economic read Audience outcomes A current, named read on the UK government, the opposition and the likely policy direction A clear view of where banking, fiscal and regulatory risk sits for UK-exposed organisations An informed sense of the political and social pressures shaping the British economy Direct answers to leadership questions through Q and A with a working political editor

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

Why organisations work with Richard Florida His “three Ts” framework (technology, talent, tolerance) remains the most cited model in talent geography, drawn on by city governments and corporate location strategists worldwide. He named and quantified the creative class, the 40-million-strong workforce whose location and lifestyle decisions now drive regional economic growth. Through the Creative Class Group, he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels, alongside city and regional governments worldwide. He co-founded CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg, and contributes regularly to The Atlantic and the Financial Times. His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis examined how the same forces driving creative-economy growth also produce inequality and segregation, giving leaders a more honest account of the trade-offs in talent-led strategies. Biography highlights University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management Author of The Rise of the Creative Class, winner of the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004 Co-founder of CityLab, now owned by Bloomberg Ranked #19 on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers in 2017 Founder of the Creative Class Group, advising BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels Biography Talent used to follow jobs. Florida’s research, beginning with his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, demonstrated that the relationship had reversed. The most ambitious workers were now choosing cities first, gravitating to those that combined what he called the three Ts: technology, talent, and tolerance. The Rise of the Creative Class won the Washington Monthly Political Book Award and was named a Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of 2004. The book quantified a workforce of 40 million Americans whose decisions about where to live were beginning to drive regional economies. It became the foundation for how cities and large employers think about competing for human capital. His 2017 book The New Urban Crisis confronted what creative-economy growth had produced. In cities like New York, San Francisco, and London, the same forces driving wealth creation were also increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and hollowing out the middle class. Florida calls this winner-take-all urbanism. The book gave civic and corporate leaders a sharper account of the trade-offs in talent-led growth. Florida is University Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, which he helped found. He is also Visiting Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and a Distinguished Fellow at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. Through the Creative Class Group he has advised BMW, Audi, Microsoft, Facebook, and Starwood Hotels on talent and location strategy. Key speaking topics The creative class and the geography of talent Talent attraction and retention in the post-industrial economy Cities as engines of growth and inequality Real estate and corporate location strategy in the creative economy Innovation and the conditions that produce it The future of work in superstar cities Ideal for Chief Human Resources Officers and heads of talent making decisions about where to recruit, locate, and build culture Real estate developers, REITs, and corporate location strategists City leaders, mayors, and economic development agencies competing for investment and talent Boards and CEOs of large employers reassessing geographic footprint after the shift to hybrid work Audience outcomes Florida’s creative class framework, including who it covers and where the category is now concentrated globally Detailed data on which cities and regions are gaining and losing talent right now A diagnosis of why creative-economy growth also generates inequality and segregation, and what cities are doing in response Specific implications for location and recruitment strategy in their own organisation

Why organisations work with Ricardo Hausmann He built the frameworks. Economic Complexity and Growth Diagnostics, now used by the IMF, the World Bank, and governments from South Africa to Sri Lanka, are his work. Audiences hear them from the person who originated them. Fifty country engagements deep. The Harvard Growth Lab has run more than 50 research initiatives across nearly 30 countries since 2006, under his direction. He brings what those projects revealed about why standard reform packages fail and where productive capability actually compounds. He has held the brief. Former Minister of Planning of Venezuela and the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, where he founded the Research Department. He speaks to ministers, central bank governors, and global CFOs as someone who has been on their side of the table. Powershoring is his framing. The argument that energy-intensive production will migrate to countries with abundant green electricity, and that this rewires comparative advantage, originated in his Growth Lab work. Boards working out where to put the next decarbonised plant get the underlying logic from him. The vocabulary traces back to him. Original Sin, Dark Matter, Self-Discovery, and Powershoring are his coinages, now standard in IMF and central bank discourse on sovereign risk and the energy transition. Biography highlights Founder and Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab; Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. Originator with César Hidalgo of the Economic Complexity methodology, published as The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity (MIT Press, 2014). Originator with Dani Rodrik and Andrés Velasco of the Growth Diagnostics framework, adopted by the World Bank as a long-running executive education course. First Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he founded the Research Department. Former Minister of Planning of Venezuela; former Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. Monthly columnist for Project Syndicate; research cited more than 60,000 times and covered by The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Biography Most standard development indicators fail to predict which economies will actually grow. They measure outputs and surface conditions, not the underlying productive capabilities that generate them. That gap is what Economic Complexity, the framework Ricardo Hausmann built with César Hidalgo at Harvard’s Growth Lab, set out to close. Hausmann founded the Growth Lab at Harvard Kennedy School in 2006. It has since run more than 50 country engagements across nearly 30 countries, identifying the binding constraints on growth and the industries that existing capabilities make possible. The Growth Diagnostics methodology, developed with Dani Rodrik and Andrés Velasco, is now taught at the World Bank and used by governments worldwide. Before Harvard he was on the other side of the brief. He served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela in the early 1990s, then became the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank, where he founded the Research Department. He has seen which policy frameworks survive contact with fiscal and political reality, and which collapse on first contact. His more recent work has moved into the geography of decarbonisation. Powershoring, a concept developed in the Growth Lab, argues that energy-intensive production will migrate to countries with abundant green electricity, rewiring global supply chains in the process. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate; the Growth Lab’s recent client roster runs from Bolivia and the UAE to Wyoming and Western Australia. Key speaking topics Economic complexity and country diversification Growth diagnostics Powershoring and the energy transition Sovereign risk, original sin, and dark matter Industrial policy in a decarbonising economy Latin American political economy Global supply chain reconfiguration Ideal for Boards and CEOs setting country exposure and supply chain strategy. CFOs and treasurers managing sovereign and currency risk in emerging markets. Heads of corporate strategy planning industrial investment under the energy transition. Multilateral institutions, finance ministries, and central bank leadership. Audience outcomes A working diagnostic for why some economies grow and others stall, built on the Economic Complexity framework. A sharper read on where productive capability is compounding and where it is decaying, with implications for supply chain placement and country exposure. The case for powershoring and the structural logic that will move energy-intensive production toward countries with abundant green electricity. What 50+ Growth Lab country engagements have revealed about why standard reform packages fail. The vocabulary that finance ministries and central banks now use to discuss sovereign risk: original sin, dark matter, self-discovery.

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

Why organisations work with Rageh Omaar A reporting record built on the ground in Baghdad, Kabul, Darfur and across the wider Middle East and Africa, not a studio commentator with borrowed authority A Peabody for BBC dispatches from Darfur and a BAFTA for the BBC’s Afghanistan coverage, two of the most demanding awards in international news A daily editorial seat at ITV News that keeps his read on conflict, sanctions and the international order current rather than retrospective A track record chairing senior-stakes events for Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, The Economist and DNV in Oslo, where the brief is to keep a difficult conversation moving without flattening it Biography highlights International Affairs Editor, ITV News, and presenter on ITV News at Ten and the current affairs strand On Assignment Former senior BBC foreign correspondent, the lead face of BBC News during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the only western television journalist inside Taliban-held Kabul as it fell in 2001 Peabody Award winner for BBC reporting from Darfur, BAFTA winner for the BBC’s coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan Presenter of Witness and The Rageh Omaar Report on Al Jazeera English between 2006 and 2010 Author of Revolution Day: The Real Story of the Battle for Iraq (Penguin) and Only Half of Me: Being a Muslim in Britain (Viking) Authored long-form documentary series for the BBC including The Life of Muhammad (BBC Two) and The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors (BBC Two) Biography Baghdad in March 2003 was the first conflict of the modern news cycle, fought as much through television as through the air. Rageh Omaar led the BBC’s coverage from inside the city as the bombing began, and his nightly dispatches became, for British and international audiences, the picture of how the war was unfolding. The reporting won him an international audience and a permanent association with the most difficult kind of foreign coverage, journalism done from the place the story is happening. The career sits on a longer record. Omaar was the only western television journalist inside Taliban-held Kabul as it fell in 2001, work that earned the BBC a BAFTA. His subsequent reporting from Darfur for the BBC was recognised with a Peabody, the most stringent broadcast journalism prize awarded in the United States. After a period at Al Jazeera English presenting Witness and The Rageh Omaar Report, he moved to ITV News in 2013 and was promoted to International Affairs Editor a year later. Beyond breaking news, his work has consistently turned to the long story of the Islamic world and its relationship with Europe. Documentary series including The Life of Muhammad and The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors, both for BBC Two, sit alongside his books Revolution Day and Only Half of Me, the second a study of British Muslim identity drawn partly from his own Somali-British background. That body of work is what differentiates him from a general-purpose news anchor when corporate audiences want a serious on-stage conversation about the Middle East, Africa or the wider rules-based order. On the platform, he is engaged most often as moderator, chair and interviewer for senior audiences at firms including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, The Economist and DNV. The brief in those rooms is to handle a sensitive subject in front of a room that knows the surface of it, and to draw out a guest or a panel without letting the conversation drift. That is the craft he brings, supported by reporting credentials that let him hold the room when the topic is geopolitics rather than industry talk. Key speaking topics Geopolitics and international affairs The Middle East and the rules-based order Africa, conflict and economic development Foreign reporting and the modern news cycle Islam, identity and the West Conference moderation, panel chairing and on-stage interviewing Ideal for Boards and executive committees commissioning a serious on-stage conversation on geopolitical risk, the Middle East or Africa Annual conferences and global leadership offsites that need a credible chair for the international-affairs session Policy, energy and financial-services events where the moderator must hold authority on conflict, sanctions and political risk Corporate award ceremonies and after-dinner formats that require a recognisable broadcaster with substance behind the name Audience outcomes A grounded read on the international story currently shaping board-level decisions, drawn from a working editor’s seat rather than archive material A clearer sense of how the Middle East and Africa look from inside the reporting, beyond the cable news framing An on-stage conversation or panel that holds together at the level senior audiences expect, with difficult questions asked and not avoided A frame for thinking about Islam, identity and the West that comes from sustained reporting and writing, not commentary

Why organisations work with Peter Frankopan His central argument in The Silk Roads – that Eurasian trade routes, not Western nation-states, were the real axis of wealth and power for most of human history – gives leaders a structurally different mental map for reading where global economic gravity is moving. This is not commentary; it is a published, peer-reviewed thesis that has sold over two million copies across forty languages. The Earth Transformed makes a specific and uncomfortable argument for boards: that climate and the natural environment are not a policy consideration layered onto geopolitics, but the primary driver of the rise and fall of economies and empires. It resets how serious organisations should be thinking about long-term risk, not just ESG compliance. His advisory work for the World Bank on South Asian transport corridors and with UNIDO on Belt and Road infrastructure means his analysis of global connectivity is grounded in live geopolitical and economic reality – not theoretical. Named one of Prospect Magazine’s World’s 50 Top Thinkers in 2019, his work is positioned at the intersection of serious scholarship and applied strategic relevance – carrying weight with both policymakers and corporate boards. His geographic scope is genuinely unusual: he works across the Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Iran, Central Asia, and China as an integrated system – making him the rare authority on Eurasian dynamics as a whole rather than a single-region specialist. Biography highlights Professor of Global History, Oxford University; Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director, Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research; Senior Research Fellow, Worcester College UNESCO Professor of Silk Roads Studies; Bye-Fellow, King’s College, Cambridge Author of The Silk Roads (Bloomsbury) – No.1 Sunday Times bestseller, Sunday Times Book of the Decade 2010–19, translated into more than 40 languages, 2m+ copies sold Author of The Earth Transformed (Bloomsbury) – The Times History Book of the Year; Financial Times and Guardian/Observer Book of the Year Named one of Prospect Magazine’s World’s 50 Top Thinkers (2019); recipient of the Calliope Prize, German Emigration Center, and the Carical Foundation Human Sciences Prize Senior Advisor to the World Bank on South Asian transport corridors; involved with UNIDO’s Bridge for Cities Programme on Belt and Road and sustainable urban development Regular contributor to the Financial Times, Guardian, and New York Times; co-host of the Legacy podcast (Goalhanger/Wondery) with Afua Hirsch Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Royal Historical Society, Royal Asiatic Society, and Royal Geographical Society Biography The Silk Roads were not a romantic footnote to European history. They were the main event. That is the argument Peter Frankopan – Professor of Global History at Oxford and Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research – has spent two decades building: that the trade routes running through Central Asia, Persia, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean were the real axis of wealth, power, and exchange for most of recorded history, and that the West’s period of dominance was the exception, not the rule. His book The Silk Roads made that case to a global readership – No.1 in the Sunday Times, named Book of the Decade, translated into more than forty languages. The New Silk Roads brought the argument into the present, reading China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the re-emergence of Central Asian states, and the reconfiguration of energy markets not as emerging-market news but as the return of structural patterns. His most recent work, The Earth Transformed – The Times History Book of the Year 2023 – extends the argument further still: climate and the natural environment, he argues, are not a policy layer on top of geopolitics but the defining force in the rise and fall of civilisations and economies. Frankopan does not only write about geopolitics. He advises on it. He has served as Senior Advisor to the World Bank on South Asian transport corridors and worked with UNIDO on the future of sustainable cities along Belt and Road. Named one of Prospect Magazine’s World’s 50 Top Thinkers in 2019, he contributes to the Financial Times, Guardian, and New York Times, and advises governments, multilateral institutions, and multinational organisations on geopolitical risk. For boards navigating what is, by any historical measure, a genuine structural shift in where power, trade, and risk are concentrated, Frankopan offers something rarer than expertise: a framework for distinguishing what is structurally new from what has happened before, and knowing which is which. Key speaking topics Global power shifts and the rebalancing between East and West The Silk Roads: Eurasian trade, connectivity, and long-term economic patterns China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the new geography of global commerce Geopolitical risk: Russia, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Iran Climate and environment as long-term drivers of economic and geopolitical change The limits of Western strategic assumptions and the rules-based order BRICS, the global majority, and the emergence of new economic frameworks Ideal for Board members and C-suite teams assessing geopolitical risk in international trade, investment, or expansion Financial services, investment, and sovereign wealth fund audiences analysing long-term global economic trends Government, policy, and public sector leaders navigating strategic realignment between West and East International affairs forums and CEO-level summits seeking rigorous historical context for decisions with long time horizons Audience outcomes A reframed understanding of where global economic and political gravity is moving – grounded in historical evidence rather than current news cycles Clearer thinking about China, Central Asia, and the Middle East as structural actors, not simply emerging markets or risk zones to monitor A historical framework for treating climate and environmental factors as long-term geopolitical and economic forces rather than compliance issues Greater ability to distinguish structural shifts in the global order from cyclical volatility when making decisions that extend beyond the short term Specific historical precedents and patterns that challenge Western-centric assumptions embedded in most strategic planning frameworks

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

Why organisations work with Pascal Lamy He spent eight years running the WTO and five years as the EU’s Trade Commissioner. Few people alive have personally negotiated as much of the architecture that boards now watch breaking down. He works at the level of operating substance, not commentary. Doha, EU enlargement trade chapters, the China accession follow-through, the transatlantic disputes: he was in the room. He frames geoeconomics and geopolitics as a single system, an argument set out with Nicole Gnesotto in Strange New World, which gives leaders a working language for decisions they used to treat as separate. He is a credible bridge into European institutional thinking. Chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors for nine years, now President of the Paris Peace Forum and President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute. Biography highlights Director-General of the World Trade Organization, 2005 to 2013, re-elected unanimously for a second term. European Commissioner for Trade, 1999 to 2004, under Commission President Romano Prodi. Chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors at the European Commission, 1985 to 1994. CEO of Credit Lyonnais through its restructuring and privatisation, 1994 to 1999. Author of The Geneva Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-author of Strange New World: Geoeconomics vs Geopolitics (Odile Jacob, 2020). President of the Paris Peace Forum; CEPR Distinguished Fellow; affiliate professor at HEC Paris and CEIBS Shanghai. Biography The system of rules that governed cross-border trade for three decades is no longer the system companies are operating in. Tariffs, export controls, sanctions regimes and industrial subsidies have become first-order strategic variables, and the institutions designed to arbitrate them have lost most of their authority. Pascal Lamy spent two decades inside that machinery and is one of the few public figures who can describe, from the inside, what is breaking and what is taking its place. As Director-General of the World Trade Organization from 2005 to 2013, re-elected unanimously for a second term, he led the institution through the Doha Round and through China’s full integration into the global trading system. Before that, as European Commissioner for Trade from 1999 to 2004, he handled the EU’s most consequential trade files of the period, including its position on WTO accession negotiations and transatlantic disputes. His earlier career sits at the heart of the European project. For nine years he was chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors at the European Commission, working on the single market, the run-up to monetary union and successive enlargement. He then ran Credit Lyonnais through its restructuring and privatisation, a reminder that his read on policy is paired with operating experience inside a balance sheet under pressure. He now writes and convenes from a small set of platforms: President of the Paris Peace Forum, President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute, CEPR Distinguished Fellow, affiliate professor at HEC Paris and CEIBS Shanghai. With Nicole Gnesotto he co-authored Strange New World, the argument that geoeconomics and geopolitics now have to be read as one system. For boards trying to set capital allocation under that framing, he is among the most credible voices available. Key speaking topics Global trade and the future of the WTO Geoeconomics and geopolitics EU-US-China relations European integration and the EU policy agenda Sanctions, export controls and industrial policy Globalisation and supply chain restructuring Multilateral governance under strain Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material exposure to US, EU and China trade policy CSOs, heads of public affairs and chief economists setting macro and political risk frameworks Investor and asset manager forums focused on capital allocation under geopolitical stress Senior policy and government affairs leaders working on EU institutional questions Audience outcomes A working map of how the trade and geoeconomics system is actually being rewired, from someone who helped write the previous version A grounded read on the EU-US-China triangle that goes beyond headline risk Sharper questions for the board on sanctions exposure, supply chain restructuring and industrial policy alignment A vocabulary for treating geoeconomics and geopolitics as one decision frame, not two