ESG Strategy

Key speaking topics Retail leadership and turnaround Corporate governance and board leadership Organisational culture Business transformation in established brands Corporate social responsibility Public service leadership and reform Ideal for Boards and executive leadership teams Retail and consumer sector organisations Corporate governance and risk forums Public sector leadership audiences Audience outcomes Clear insight into leading large, complex organisations through change. Practical perspectives on board-level decision-making and governance. Understanding of leadership accountability in public and private sector contexts. Lessons from retail transformation and brand stewardship. Why organisations work with Stuart Rose Direct experience leading and chairing major UK retail businesses. Board-level perspective across public companies and private enterprises. First-hand insight into government advisory work on organisational culture. Commercially grounded understanding of leadership, governance and corporate responsibility. Biography Stuart Rose is one of the UK’s most experienced retail leaders, having led and chaired major consumer businesses at scale. As Chief Executive and Executive Chairman of Marks & Spencer, he guided the organisation through a significant turnaround period and strategic change, reinforcing its position as one of Britain’s most recognisable brands. His executive career includes Chief Executive roles at the Burton Group, Argos, Booker and Arcadia Group, giving him broad operational experience across fashion, general merchandise, food and wholesale. He brings first-hand insight into managing complex supply chains, brand repositioning and commercial performance in highly competitive markets. At board level, he has served as Chairman of Ocado Group and Zenith Automotive, and as Non-Executive Chairman of EG Group, remaining on its board as a non-executive director. These roles reflect deep expertise in corporate governance, oversight and long-term value creation across public and private enterprises. Beyond the private sector, he was appointed to advise the UK Government on NHS leadership and organisational culture in underperforming hospitals, contributing to discussions on accountability and reform in complex public institutions. He is a Conservative life peer and sits in the House of Lords. Knighted for services to the retail industry and corporate social responsibility, Stuart Rose combines executive leadership, board experience and public service insight. He offers organisations a clear, commercially grounded perspective on governance, culture and strategic leadership in demanding environments.

Why organisations work with Simon Anholt Twenty years of direct advisory work with Presidents, Prime Ministers, monarchs and governments across more than 60 countries gives him a breadth of comparative case material that no academic or agency can match. The Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, one of the largest social surveys ever conducted and running since 2005, gives his analysis a measured baseline rather than an anecdotal one. The Good Country Index reframed nation performance from domestic output to global contribution and has become a reference point for governments, NGOs and multilateral institutions. His book The Good Country Equation was described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as «a masterpiece», and his earlier books Competitive Identity, Brand America and Brand New Justice are among the standard texts on place branding and its implications. He founded the Journal of Place Brand and Public Diplomacy, anchoring him inside the academic community that now studies the field he defined. Biography highlights Independent policy advisor; Anholt & Co. has worked with governments of more than 60 countries Coined the term «nation brand» in 1998; founder of the field of place branding Founder of the Good Country Index (2014) and the Global Vote (2016) Founder of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index (2005-); 300 billion+ data points analysed Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia Author of Brand New Justice, Brand America, Competitive Identity, Places and The Good Country Equation Founding and emeritus editor of the Journal of Place Brand and Public Diplomacy Biography National reputation is one of the most consequential and least-understood assets a country owns, and Simon Anholt has spent more than two decades making it measurable. He coined the term «nation brand» in 1998, founded the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index in 2005, and has since advised more than sixty governments, Presidents, Prime Ministers and monarchs on how to build the kind of international reputation that actually shifts investment, talent and political influence. His central argument is that reputation is earned through what a country does, not what it says. That thesis became the Good Country Index in 2014, an annual ranking of how much each country contributes to humanity and the planet, built from 35 indicators drawn largely from United Nations and World Bank datasets. It has since become a reference point in international policy discussions, and a rare example of a league table that leaders take seriously. The Global Vote project, which he launched in 2016, extends the same argument into electoral politics, allowing international participation in national elections on the basis of candidates’ potential contribution to humanity. His books, Brand New Justice, Brand America, Competitive Identity, Places and The Good Country Equation, set out the academic and practical foundations of the field, with the latter described by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as «a masterpiece». He holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of East Anglia and founded the Journal of Place Brand and Public Diplomacy, the academic journal that now carries the field he defined. For governments, national agencies, multilateral institutions and multinationals working on the intersection of reputation, policy and global cooperation, Anholt offers a combination of comparative advisory experience, independent data and a coherent ethical frame that is difficult to find elsewhere. Key speaking topics The Good Country Index and the case for global cooperation Nation branding and place branding Reputation, policy and national competitiveness Governance and the global consequences of domestic decisions Big data and national identity Tourism, trade and investment promotion strategy Ideal for Governments, heads of state offices, ministries and national agencies working on reputation, investment and tourism Multilateral institutions, NGOs and policy forums focused on international cooperation and the SDG agenda Multinationals with significant place-branding or country-of-origin exposure International conferences on geopolitics, development and public diplomacy Audience outcomes A measurable framework for national reputation drawn from the Nation Brands Index and the Good Country Index A clearer view of the policy decisions that genuinely move international perception, versus those that do not Comparative case material from more than 60 countries advised by Anholt & Co. Reference texts in Competitive Identity and The Good Country Equation for internal and programme follow-up A framing of national strategy that integrates reputation, policy and global contribution rather than treating them as separate agendas

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 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

Why organisations work with Paolo Scaroni He has run two of Europe’s largest energy companies, Enel from 2002 to 2005 and Eni from 2005 to 2014, through privatisation, restructuring and the early phase of the energy transition. He brings a working view of natural gas as a transition fuel from inside the boardrooms that bought, sold and shipped it, not from the outside as an analyst. His current chairmanship of Enel and nine years as Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co give him an unusually current read on capital allocation, M&A and governance in the European energy sector. He has sat on the boards of Veolia, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom, Assicurazioni Generali and the London Stock Exchange, which gives him cross-sector reference points few energy speakers can offer. Discussions are pragmatic rather than ideological, useful for boards trying to reconcile net zero commitments with capital, supply and political reality. Biography highlights CEO of Enel from May 2002 to May 2005 and CEO of Eni from 2005 to 2014. Chairman of Enel since May 2023; Chairman of A.C. Milan since July 2018. Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co Group from May 2014 to May 2023. CEO of Pilkington plc in London from 1997 to 2002, leading the turnaround of one of the world’s largest flat glass manufacturers; earlier CEO of Techint from 1985 to 1996. Past non-executive director at Veolia Environment, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom and Assicurazioni Generali; former Vice Chairman of the London Stock Exchange. Cavaliere del Lavoro (2004) and member of the Légion d’honneur (2007); Bocconi graduate and Columbia Business School MBA. Biography European energy is being asked to do three things at once: decarbonise, stay secure and remain affordable. Few executives have made those trade-offs at the scale Paolo Scaroni has. As CEO of Enel from 2002 and then of Eni from 2005 to 2014, he ran Italy’s two largest energy companies through privatisation, restructuring and the first wave of the climate agenda. At Enel he abandoned the multi-utility model and pushed the group back into core energy, set up a dedicated wind business, and brought the company into the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. At Eni he tilted the portfolio away from oil toward natural gas, framing gas as a transition fuel, and the group’s net worth rose from EUR 39 billion to EUR 61 billion over his tenure. Eni was added to the Carbon Performance Leadership Index in 2012. After Eni he spent nine years as Deputy Chairman of Rothschild & Co, advising on European deals across the energy and industrial sectors, before being appointed Chairman of Enel in May 2023. He has chaired A.C. Milan since 2018, including through the club’s 2022 Scudetto and the change of ownership to RedBird Capital. Past non-executive seats at Veolia, BAE Systems, ABN AMRO, Alstom, Assicurazioni Generali and the London Stock Exchange give him a working view of governance across regulated industries. His public position on the energy transition is unusually direct: renewables alone will not get Europe to its CO2 targets, energy efficiency and nuclear have to be part of the answer, and gas is the realistic bridge. That argument carries weight because he had to allocate capital against it, not just write about it. Key speaking topics Energy transition and energy security Geopolitical and regulatory risk in energy markets Natural gas, nuclear and the realistic path to net zero Large-scale transformation in legacy industries Board governance and stakeholder management in regulated sectors Capital allocation in capital-intensive industries European industrial competitiveness Ideal for Boards and executive committees in energy, utilities, industrials and infrastructure CFOs, heads of strategy and corporate development weighing transition capex Investor and lender audiences focused on European energy and industrial credit Senior leadership teams reframing decarbonisation strategy against geopolitical risk Audience outcomes A grounded read on where European energy security and the transition timetable actually meet. A sharper view of how natural gas, nuclear and renewables fit together in a credible decarbonisation plan. Boardroom-tested judgement on geopolitical and regulatory risk in capital-intensive industries. A reference frame from someone who has chaired and run companies on both sides of the energy table.

Why organisations work with Oliver Hart Hart’s theory of incomplete contracts and the Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights theory underpin most modern thinking on corporate governance and the boundaries of the firm. Boards working through M&A, integration, outsourcing, or governance redesign get a framework grounded in four decades of foundational research. The Hart-Zingales shareholder welfare framework gives boards a substantive third position between Friedman-style shareholder primacy and stakeholder capitalism rhetoric. It is published in peer-reviewed journals and directly applicable to live ESG and shareholder voting decisions. Hart has served as a government expert witness in major US legal cases, including Black & Decker v. USA and Wells Fargo v. USA. The framework has been tested under adversarial legal scrutiny, with high-stakes commercial outcomes turning on the economic argument. Hart’s body of work has shaped four decades of research on ownership and incentive design. The 2016 Nobel Prize and 2023 Knight Bachelor are the formal recognition of a framework that now underpins how regulators and corporate boards approach governance questions. Biography highlights Co-recipient of the 2016 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, awarded with Bengt Holmström for contributions to contract theory. Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard, the institution’s highest faculty rank. Author of Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure (Oxford University Press), the standard reference text on the economic theory of the firm. Knight Bachelor in the 2023 King’s Birthday Honours for services to economic theory. Past president of the American Law and Economics Association and past vice president of the American Economic Association. Fellow of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Biography What is a firm, and where should its boundaries lie? The question sits underneath most of the contested decisions facing modern boards, from M&A integration to ESG governance. The framework that lets boards answer it rigorously was largely built by Sir Oliver Hart. Hart’s contributions to contract theory, recognised with the 2016 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, centre on a foundational insight. Real contracts are incomplete: they cannot specify every contingency, and whoever holds the right to decide on the unspecified elements holds the real power. The Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights theory built on this to formalise when activities should sit inside firms and when they should sit in markets. More recently, his work with Luigi Zingales of Chicago Booth has redrawn the corporate purpose debate. The Hart-Zingales shareholder welfare framework reframes corporate objectives around the actual preferences of investors, including their non-financial concerns, and proposes shareholder voting as the mechanism for expressing them. The framework speaks directly to live disputes about ESG votes and shareholder activism on social issues. At Harvard since 1993, Hart holds the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professorship and chaired the Economics department from 2000 to 2003. Past president of the American Law and Economics Association and fellow of the British Academy, he was made a Knight Bachelor in 2023 for services to economic theory. The 1986 paper with Sandy Grossman, “The Costs and Benefits of Ownership,” remains the standard reference for how firm boundaries are analysed in modern economics. Key speaking topics Contract theory and incomplete contracts The theory of the firm Corporate governance and ownership Shareholder welfare and corporate purpose ESG governance and shareholder activism Incentive design Ideal for Boards of directors and chairs General counsel, CFOs, and corporate governance leaders Investors and asset managers grappling with ESG mandates Policymakers, regulators, and antitrust authorities Audience outcomes A working theory of where firm boundaries should lie and why, applicable to live decisions on M&A and outsourcing. A defensible position on corporate purpose that goes beyond Friedman versus stakeholder capitalism slogans. The economic logic underneath shareholder activism and ESG governance, including when shareholder voting matters and when it doesn’t. The intellectual vocabulary for thinking about ownership and incentive design with the seriousness these topics require.

Why organisations work with Mark Roe His published research identifies the specific political forces – interest groups, legislative bargaining, regulatory path-dependence – that determine how corporations are governed in different national systems, giving boards and investors a structural map that economic analysis alone does not provide. Missing the Target (Oxford, 2022) dismantled the dominant short-termism narrative with economy-wide data, offering executives and policymakers a corrected diagnosis of why corporate investment patterns have changed – and where the real policy levers sit. His analysis of too-big-to-fail dynamics explains how implicit government guarantees distort corporate structure and shield management from market discipline, a framework directly relevant to financial institutions, their regulators, and the firms exposed to systemic counterparty risk. Two decades of commentary in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Project Syndicate means his arguments have been tested in public, not just in academic journals – the positions he takes in a boardroom are the same ones he defends in the financial press. His current research on the transformation of US public firms (fewer companies, greater concentration of profit and market power) reframes a debate that directly affects M&A strategy, capital allocation, and regulatory risk. Biography highlights David Berg Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, since 2001 Author of four books published by Oxford University Press, Princeton University Press, and Foundation Press, including Missing the Target (2022) and Strong Managers, Weak Owners (1994) Ranked among SSRN’s top 50 most-cited law professors, with a career high of #10 Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy; Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute Recipient of the ECGI Allen & Overy Working Paper Prize (2015) for research on structural corporate degradation in too-big-to-fail finance Regular contributor to Project Syndicate since 2004, with commentary published in the Financial Times, Forbes, and Wall Street Journal Biography Corporate governance is usually treated as a design problem: get the incentives right, align the board with shareholder interests, and the structure should optimise itself. Mark J. Roe’s research at Harvard Law School has spent three decades demonstrating that this view is incomplete. His books Strong Managers, Weak Owners (Princeton, 1994) and Political Determinants of Corporate Governance (Oxford, 2003) established a now widely cited argument: governance structures in the United States and across major economies are shaped as much by political forces as by market logic. The practical implications are specific. In the US, fragmented share ownership is not merely an outcome of deep capital markets. It reflects a century of political decisions that prevented financial institutions from accumulating concentrated ownership stakes. In continental Europe, the postwar political settlement empowered labour and entrenched blockholding structures that persist long after the conditions that created them. Roe’s work traces these connections with data and institutional detail, giving corporate leaders and policymakers a framework for understanding why governance reform so often stalls or produces unintended consequences. His most recent book, Missing the Target (Oxford, 2022), challenged the prevailing consensus that stock market short-termism is crippling corporate investment and R&D. Using economy-wide data, Roe showed that corporate R&D spending has been rising, not falling, and that the real culprits behind declining investment are political uncertainty, accelerating technological change, and a collapse in government research funding. The Wall Street Journal called it essential reading for anyone concerned with markets and policy. Before entering academia, Roe worked at the Federal Reserve System and at Cahill Gordon & Reindel on Wall Street. He held faculty positions at Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia before joining Harvard in 2001. His paper on too-big-to-fail finance won the ECGI Allen & Overy Prize in 2015. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has published over 160 scholarly papers, with more than 10,000 citations tracked by ResearchGate. Key speaking topics Political economy of corporate governance Financial regulation and systemic risk Corporate short-termism and long-term investment Too-big-to-fail finance and structural corporate degradation Shareholder activism and corporate purpose Bankruptcy, restructuring, and creditor bargaining The transformation of US public markets Ideal for Boards, chairs, and non-executive directors assessing governance structures in a politicised regulatory environment CFOs, general counsel, and heads of corporate strategy at firms navigating financial regulation, M&A, or capital structure decisions Institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers evaluating governance risk across jurisdictions Policy audiences, regulators, and central bankers examining the intersection of political economy and financial stability Audience outcomes A structural explanation of why corporate governance rules differ across major economies and why convergence has been slower than predicted A data-grounded reframing of the short-termism debate that separates genuine investment constraints from politically convenient narratives An understanding of how too-big-to-fail dynamics distort corporate structure and create hidden risks for counterparties and investors A framework for assessing how political uncertainty, interest-group pressure, and regulatory path-dependence affect capital allocation and strategic planning Specific examples from US and European corporate history that make abstract governance debates concrete and applicable to current board-level decisions

Why organisations work with Manfred Weber He sits at the centre of the institution that writes European law. As Chair of the EPP Group since 2014 and President of the EPP since 2022, he has been part of every major legislative bargain in Brussels for over a decade. He explains EU politics the way an operator does, not the way a commentator does. He has negotiated directives, including the EU Returns Directive on migration, and can talk about how a file actually moves through the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission. He gives boards a realistic read on European political risk: migration, the centre-right and far-right relationship, transatlantic tensions, Ukraine, and the EU’s competitiveness agenda. He is rare on the speaking circuit. Few sitting heads of a major European political family take corporate engagements; access to that vantage point is the offer. He speaks fluent German and English and is comfortable with senior international audiences in either language. Biography highlights President of the European People’s Party since 2022, re-elected for a second term in 2025. Chair of the EPP Group in the European Parliament since 2014, re-elected after the 2024 European elections for a fourth term. Member of the European Parliament for Bavaria since 2004, currently in his fifth parliamentary term. EPP Spitzenkandidat for President of the European Commission in 2019, nominated with 79 percent of the EPP congress vote. Vice-President of the CSU since 2015 and member of the CSU Party Presidency since 2009. Trained as a physical engineer at Munich University of Applied Sciences before entering politics, with prior experience running two companies. Biography The largest political family in Europe is the European People’s Party. Its group in the European Parliament holds more seats than any other, its national affiliates lead governments across the continent, and its members include the President of the European Commission. Manfred Weber leads both the party and the group, a combination of roles few politicians in Brussels have held simultaneously. He has been Chair of the EPP Group in the Parliament since 2014, when he became the youngest group leader in the institution’s history. He was re-elected after the 2024 European elections for his fourth term. In 2022 he was elected President of the EPP, succeeding Donald Tusk, and was re-elected for a second term in 2025. That arc gives him a continuous view of the legislative engine of the EU across more than a decade of crises: the eurozone, migration in 2015 and again now, Brexit, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the energy shock, and the competitiveness debate. Before Brussels he trained as a physical engineer at Munich University of Applied Sciences and ran two companies, then entered politics through the Junge Union and the CSU. He became the youngest member of the Bavarian State Parliament in 2002 at the age of 29, and was elected to the European Parliament two years later. He has represented Bavaria continuously since, sitting on the committees that shape constitutional affairs, civil liberties, and home affairs. He negotiated the EU Returns Directive, the first Home Affairs directive adopted under the ordinary legislative procedure. For a corporate audience, the relevant point is not the biography but the vantage point. He is in the room when European policy is decided, and he can explain to a board, in plain terms, what is changing in Brussels, where the political centre is moving, and what that means for the rules companies will be operating under for the next five years. Key speaking topics European political direction and the EU policy agenda EU competitiveness and the regulatory environment Migration policy and border security Transatlantic relations and the war in Ukraine The future of the EU after enlargement Centre-right politics in Europe and the rise of the far right Germany, the CSU, and Berlin’s role in the EU Ideal for CEOs, boards, and government affairs leaders setting Europe strategy Strategy and policy leaders at financial institutions, energy, defence, and industrial firms with material EU exposure Senior leadership teams at multinationals navigating EU regulation on AI, competition, sustainability, and trade Conference programmes and closed-door briefings on European political risk Audience outcomes A clearer read on where the EU is heading on competitiveness, migration, defence, and the green transition A sense of the political map across European capitals and how it constrains or enables the Commission’s agenda A realistic view of the centre-right and far-right dynamic and what it means for stability of EU policy An inside account of how legislation actually moves through Brussels, from someone who has done the deals Sharper questions to put to in-house government affairs and European strategy teams

Why organisations work with Joseph Stiglitz His Nobel Prize work demonstrated that markets systematically mis-price when participants have unequal access to information – a finding that maps directly onto corporate governance failures, credit risk models, and regulatory blind spots that boards encounter in practice. He is among the very few economists to have held operational control over both US domestic economic policy (Council of Economic Advisers) and global financial architecture (World Bank Chief Economist) – his critique of institutions carries authority because it comes from inside them. The commission he chaired for President Sarkozy in 2008 produced the framework now being advanced by the OECD as a formal alternative to GDP. Organisations engaged in ESG reporting, long-term value creation, and sustainability governance are already operating within the measurement landscape he helped design. The Price of Inequality (2012) and The Road to Freedom (2024) make the specific, evidence-based case that inequality is a structural drag on growth, market stability, and democratic governance – giving senior leaders a rigorous foundation for treating social outcomes as financial risk, not reputational noise. His analysis of globalisation – grounded in direct experience of how the IMF and World Bank made their most consequential decisions – gives organisations operating across emerging markets a more accurate model of where global financial governance fails and why. Biography highlights Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001), shared with Akerlof and Spence, for the theory of markets with asymmetric information – a finding that reshaped economics and became standard in policy analysis University Professor at Columbia University, the institution’s highest academic rank, with appointments in Economics, SIPA, and Columbia Business School Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers (1995-97) under President Clinton; Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank (1997-2000) Chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress (2008-09) at President Sarkozy’s request; published as Mismeasuring Our Lives; continues to chair the successor High-Level Expert Group at the OECD John Bates Clark Medal (1979); more than 40 honorary doctorates, including from Cambridge and Oxford; named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world (2011) Author of more than 10 books for general audiences, including Globalization and Its Discontents (2002), The Price of Inequality (2012), and The Road to Freedom (2024) Lead author of the 1995 IPCC Report, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; regular contributor to Project Syndicate; regular coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Guardian Biography The strategic blind spot in most boardrooms is not a lack of data – it is a set of inherited economic assumptions that have been treated as fact. Markets clear. Prices reflect value. Deregulation improves outcomes. Joseph Stiglitz has spent five decades building the evidence against each of these claims, from the insurance market to the credit system to the global financial architecture. His Nobel Prize in 2001 recognised the foundational work. In markets where some participants know more than others, the outcomes that standard models predict do not materialise. Credit gets rationed below efficient levels. Insurance markets produce worse aggregate outcomes than pooling would allow. Labour markets generate unemployment that wage adjustments alone cannot resolve. These are not edge cases – they are the structural features of every market senior leaders navigate. Beyond the academy, Stiglitz has held the positions where those theories met consequences. He served as Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton and as Chief Economist of the World Bank. His subsequent criticism of those institutions – in Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) and The Price of Inequality (2012) – carries weight precisely because it was written by someone who watched the decisions being made. His more recent work extends the argument into measurement and institutional design. The commission he chaired for President Sarkozy produced Mismeasuring Our Lives (2009), a formal challenge to GDP as a reliable indicator of economic and social progress. That work now underpins the OECD’s ongoing effort to develop performance metrics beyond output. His 2024 book, The Road to Freedom, argues that the economic assumptions embedded in most policy and business planning are deliberate choices – with identifiable costs. For organisations navigating inequality risk, regulatory exposure, and ESG pressure, the distinction matters. Key speaking topics Information economics and market failure Economic inequality and structural risk Globalisation and its institutional consequences Beyond-GDP measurement and performance metrics Progressive capitalism and regulatory design Global financial architecture and reform Political economy of growth and distribution Ideal for Boards, CFOs, and chief economists assessing macroeconomic risk and long-term structural exposure Policy-facing organisations, government affairs functions, and institutions engaged in regulatory strategy Organisations navigating ESG, sustainability reporting, and long-term value measurement Financial services and investment institutions operating across global and emerging markets Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of why standard economic metrics – GDP, market efficiency assumptions, deregulation as growth driver – systematically obscure real performance and risk Insight into how information failures produce predictable market outcomes that corporate governance frameworks routinely miss A framework for interpreting the structural forces – inequality, regulatory shift, political backlash against globalisation – now reshaping the operating environment for large organisations Familiarity with the alternative performance metrics emerging from the OECD and the international standards community, and how they apply to strategic decision-making A more accurate model of where global financial governance fails and why – grounded in direct institutional experience at the World Bank and within the US government

Why organisations work with Jonathon Porritt Three decades inside the rooms where government, business, and civil society negotiate climate policy, including nine years chairing the UK Sustainable Development Commission for three prime ministers. Co-founder of Forum for the Future, the consultancy that has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE boards on serious sustainability strategy rather than reporting compliance. Author of Capitalism as if the World Matters, a book that argues capitalism is the only viable vehicle for sustainability and sets out what reshaping it actually demands; cited as a foundational text in corporate sustainability curricula. Independence from any single corporate paymaster; willingness to tell senior teams what their own sustainability advisors will not. A long view that connects climate, biodiversity, inequality, and population; useful for boards trying to understand how environmental risks compound across a strategic horizon. Biography highlights Co-founder and Founder Director of Forum for the Future (1996-2023), one of the world’s leading sustainability charities, with offices in the UK, US, India, and Southeast Asia. Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission, 2000-2009, advising the Blair and Brown governments on environmental policy. Director of Friends of the Earth (UK), 1984-1990; former Co-Chair of the UK Green Party. Co-founder of The Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, delivered through the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Author of Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020), The World We Made (Phaidon, 2013), and Capitalism as if the World Matters (Earthscan, 2005). CBE for services to environmental protection (2000); Chancellor of Keele University, 2012-2022. Biography The corporate climate agenda has run into its first credibility test. A decade of net-zero pledges, ESG reporting, and sustainability committees has not closed the gap between what boards say and what their capital plans deliver. Porritt has spent his working life inside that gap. He co-founded Forum for the Future in 1996 with Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins, and ran it as Founder Director for nearly thirty years. Forum has worked with Marks & Spencer, Unilever, and other FTSE-100 boards on the harder questions of business model change, not the softer ones of disclosure. Before that, he ran Friends of the Earth (UK) through the late 1980s and co-chaired the Green Party. For nine years he chaired the UK Sustainable Development Commission, advising Tony Blair and Gordon Brown directly. He also co-founded the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme, now part of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, where senior executives go to interrogate their own sustainability strategies. Few people have spent as much time on both sides of that table. His books map the argument. Capitalism as if the World Matters made the case that capitalism is the only viable engine for a sustainable future, and set out the reforms that case requires. The World We Made imagined 2050 as if those reforms had landed. Hope in Hell, written into the climate emergency, is sharper and more impatient. Read together, they explain why he is taken seriously by chief executives and climate activists alike, even when he is telling each of them something they would rather not hear. Key speaking topics Sustainability strategy and ESG governance Climate risk and the energy transition Reforming capitalism for environmental limits Net-zero credibility and corporate accountability Long-term scenario planning and systems change Biodiversity, nature, and business Intergenerational responsibility and the next decade Ideal for Board directors and CEOs reviewing the credibility of their net-zero and ESG commitments Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads building serious, board-ready strategy Investor relations and capital allocation teams under increasing scrutiny on transition planning Strategy and risk leaders trying to integrate climate and biodiversity into long-range planning Audience outcomes A clearer reading of where their own organisation’s climate strategy is exposed to investor, regulator, and employee scrutiny A working understanding of what credible, board-level sustainability looks like beyond reporting compliance A sharper sense of how climate, biodiversity, inequality, and capital allocation compound as connected risks Direct, unflattering challenge from someone with no commercial interest in their answer

Why organisations work with Jim Hagemann Snabe He has chaired transformation programmes at Siemens AG and A.P. Møller-Mærsk simultaneously – two of Europe’s most scrutinized industrial reinventions. That makes him a peer reference for boards, not a consultant’s interpretation of what transformation requires. The Dreams and Details framework is a published, practitioner-tested model for holding ambitious organizational direction and disciplined operational execution at the same time. Named Leadership Book of the Year by Lederne, Denmark’s largest leadership organization, it gives leadership teams a common language that survives the boardroom. His decision-making at Maersk included committing the world’s largest container shipping company to a net-zero target from a position of board conviction, not regulatory compliance. For boards navigating ESG commitments under shareholder and market pressure, that precedent is directly relevant. While Co-CEO of SAP, he and Bill McDermott ranked #2 on Glassdoor’s global CEO list with a 99% employee approval rating – while doubling the company’s value. His case that transformation and organizational trust are compatible is backed by a verifiable outcome, not a principle. He holds board-level technology exposure (SAP, C3.ai) and industrial governance leadership (Siemens, Maersk, Allianz) within the same career. Few active board chairs can speak across both sides of the digital transformation argument with equal authority. Biography highlights Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG since 2018; Supervisory Board member since 2013 Co-CEO of SAP AG (2010-2014) alongside Bill McDermott; SAP doubled its market value during their tenure Former Chairman of the Board of Directors, A.P. Møller-Mærsk (2017-2022) Member of the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees since 2014; regular contributor to WEF Agenda on AI, digital transformation, and decarbonization Recipient of the Academy of International Business International Executive of the Year Award (2019) Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School (since 2016); teaches leadership, responsible business, and change management Co-author of three books: Dreams and Details (named Leadership Book of the Year, Lederne), Tech for Life (WEF Book Club selection, 2020), and Reinvention from the Boardroom Biography Most organizations find that past success becomes the biggest obstacle to future relevance. Optimizing what already works crowds out the investment and attention needed to build what must come next. Jim Hagemann Snabe, Chairman of Siemens AG and former Co-CEO of SAP, has navigated that tension at the top of some of Europe’s most consequential enterprises for three decades. His co-authored leadership model, Dreams and Details, argues that organizational reinvention requires two things held simultaneously. The first is an inspiring direction – an organizational dream that sets ambition without prescribing a fixed path – that empowers people to find the best route. The second is the operational capability to reach it. Named Leadership Book of the Year by Lederne, Denmark’s largest professional leadership organization, the framework is now embedded in executive programmes run by the Idonea academy and used by major European corporations. As board chairman of A.P. Møller-Mærsk from 2017 to 2022, he was a central figure in the company’s commitment to net-zero shipping – a decision made from governance conviction before regulatory timelines made it obligatory. At Siemens, he chairs a supervisory board responsible for a business spanning energy infrastructure, manufacturing, and healthcare, with revenues exceeding €78 billion. This combination – industrial, logistics, and technology governance, held from direct fiduciary responsibility – is rare among active board chairs. His three co-authored books – Dreams and Details, Tech for Life, and Reinvention from the Boardroom – trace a consistent argument: governance structures must evolve alongside the businesses they oversee. Tech for Life was selected as a World Economic Forum Book Club title in 2020. As a WEF Board of Trustees member and Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School, his ongoing work on AI and decarbonization connects directly with the organizations navigating both. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board-level reinvention Leadership frameworks for organizational transformation Digital transformation at industrial scale Decarbonization as a strategic leadership challenge Responsible AI and technology governance Stakeholder capitalism and the purpose of business Ideal for Supervisory board members and board directors facing digital or sustainability transformation mandates CEOs and executive leadership teams of large industrial, energy, or technology enterprises Chief Strategy Officers and transformation leads designing reinvention programmes for complex organizations Global leadership and governance forums convening board-level audiences on industrial transformation Audience outcomes A named framework – Dreams and Details – for approaching organizational reinvention without dismantling current performance, applicable at both board and executive level Board-level perspective on how governance structures can actively enable transformation rather than constrain it Practical framing of decarbonization and digital change as strategic leadership priorities rather than compliance exercises Insight into how parallel transformation mandates – technology and sustainability – can be sequenced and governed simultaneously at board level Greater clarity on the difference between managing against a plan and leading toward an inspiring organizational direction that unlocks human potential

Why organisations work with Jeffrey Sachs He co-designed the global development frameworks that most large organisations now report against. As Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to three successive UN Secretaries-General, Sachs helped shape both the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals – meaning he can explain what those frameworks were designed to achieve, where they are falling short, and why. His “clinical economics” methodology, introduced in The End of Poverty (2005), replaced one-size-fits-all policy prescription with country-specific diagnosis of binding constraints. Organisations operating across different markets gain a principled framework for understanding why development conditions diverge – not just the observation that they do. His credentials run through direct policy intervention rather than academic modelling. He advised the Bolivian government on halting acute hyperinflation in 1985 and the Polish Solidarity government on its market transition in 1989-90, and has subsequently advised the WHO, the World Bank, the IMF, and the OECD. What he brings is experience operating inside crises, not only analysing them. The Economist ranked him among the three most influential living economists. Time magazine named him twice to its 100 Most Influential World Leaders. Few speakers working at the intersection of sustainability, geopolitics, and global economics carry simultaneously a peer-reviewed academic reputation and independent recognition at this scale. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, distributed across more than 145 countries, and contributes regularly to CNN Opinion and the Financial Times. For organisations that need macro-economic and geopolitical complexity made accessible to boards and senior leadership, his practice in public communication is part of what he brings. Biography highlights University Professor at Columbia University – the institution’s highest academic rank – and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development; formerly Director of the Earth Institute (2002-2016) Special Advisor to three UN Secretaries-General: Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon, and António Guterres (2001-2018); currently SDG Advocate under Guterres and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Director of the UN Millennium Project (2002-2006); co-founder and director of the Millennium Villages Project (2005-2015) Author of three New York Times bestsellers: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth (2008), The Price of Civilization (2011); monthly Project Syndicate columnist reaching over 145 countries 2022 Tang Prize in Sustainable Development; co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize; France’s Legion of Honor; India’s Padma Bhushan; over 40 honorary doctorates Ranked by The Economist among the three most influential living economists; twice named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential World Leaders; prior faculty at Harvard University for more than 20 years Biography Most large organisations now set sustainability commitments and report against the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Making those commitments credible requires an understanding of the geopolitical and macroeconomic forces that will determine whether they hold. That layer of analysis is rarely available in standard corporate planning. Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor at Columbia University and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, helped design those goals. He served as Special Advisor to three successive UN Secretaries-General and directed the UN Millennium Project that established the predecessor MDG framework. The End of Poverty (2005) – a New York Times bestseller – introduced what Sachs termed “clinical economics.” The framework argues that sustainable development requires specific diagnosis of each country’s binding constraints rather than universal prescription, just as medicine requires examination before treatment. The approach has since shaped how international development institutions analyse economic stagnation. For organisations operating across multiple markets, it offers a principled basis for understanding why economic and development conditions differ. Before his work at Columbia, Sachs spent over two decades at Harvard. He advised the Bolivian government on halting acute hyperinflation in 1985, and the Polish Solidarity government on its transition to a market economy in 1989-90. He has since advised the WHO, the World Bank, the IMF, and the OECD on development policy and macroeconomic reform. His standing is independently documented from multiple sources. The Economist ranked him among the three most influential living economists. Time magazine named him twice to its 100 Most Influential World Leaders. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, distributed across more than 145 countries, and contributes to CNN Opinion and the Financial Times. He is the 2022 recipient of the Tang Prize in Sustainable Development and co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize. Key speaking topics Global sustainable development strategy and the SDG framework Geopolitics and international economic cooperation Climate economics and the energy transition Macroeconomic reform and development finance Poverty reduction and global health policy “Clinical economics” and country-specific development diagnosis Long-term global risk and the international system Ideal for Boards and C-suite leaders with sustainability commitments who need geopolitical and macroeconomic grounding Chief Sustainability Officers and ESG leads working to align corporate strategy with the global development agenda Government ministers and public sector leaders engaged with the SDG framework International development institutions and multilateral organisations Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of the geopolitical and macroeconomic forces that will determine whether climate and sustainability commitments prove viable Familiarity with the design and strategic intent of the UN Sustainable Development Goals – beyond compliance reporting An analytical framework – “clinical economics” – for understanding why development and economic conditions differ across markets and regions Informed perspective on the relationship between geopolitics, international cooperation, and long-term economic and climate outcomes Context for assessing global economic risks – sovereign debt, financial instability, energy transition, and North-South cooperation – relevant to long-term strategy