Geopolitics

Why organisations work with Amy Webb Webb’s foresight methodology is not scenario-planning by another name – it applies quantitative modelling to emerging signals, giving boards an evidential basis for long-horizon technology decisions that is defensible rather than intuitive. Her annual Tech Trends Report tracks more than 700 emerging technology and science trends and is downloaded more than one million times a year; few advisory practices produce intelligence infrastructure at comparable scale or breadth. The Big Nine named and defined the “G-MAFIA” framework – the six American and three Chinese corporations Webb argues hold structural control over AI’s trajectory. Audiences gain a durable analytical vocabulary for a problem most organisations are still describing in generic terms. Her advisory relationships with the White House, European Union, United Nations, and World Economic Forum are ongoing, not project-based – her understanding of how governments are approaching AI governance and technology risk is primary source, not aggregated. Her latest concept, “living intelligence” – the convergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced sensors into a single technology supercycle – gives senior leaders a framework for thinking beyond current AI strategy before the convergence forces reactive decisions. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Future Today Strategy Group; ranked #3 most influential management thinker globally by Thinkers50 (2025) Adjunct Professor of Strategic Foresight, NYU Stern School of Business; Visiting Fellow, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School; former Nieman Fellow, Harvard University Author of The Big Nine (2019) – longlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year, winner of the 2020 Gold Axiom Medal – and The Signals Are Talking (2016), winner of the Thinkers50 RADAR Award and 2017 Gold Axiom Medal The Genesis Machine (2022, co-authored with Andrew Hessel) named by The New Yorker as one of the year’s best nonfiction works; books translated into 23 languages Life member, Council on Foreign Relations; founding member, WEF Strategic Foresight Advisory Board; member, WEF Global Risks Board; AI Governance Alliance partner Contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; TED Talk on algorithmic thinking viewed more than 8 million times, translated into 32 languages Biography The gap between sensing that a technology will reshape a sector and knowing when – and how – to act is where most long-range strategy breaks down. Amy Webb’s work is built around closing that gap. As founder and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group, she pioneered a quantitative modelling approach to strategic foresight: one that applies the analytical rigour of economic forecasting to the identification of emerging technology signals, rather than relying on narrative scenarios or trend decks. Her books have given organisations specific frameworks for understanding the structural dynamics of technology change. The Big Nine named the six American and three Chinese corporations – the “G-MAFIA” and BAT – that Webb argues hold disproportionate control over AI’s development, and traced the geopolitical and commercial consequences of that concentration. The Genesis Machine, co-authored with biotechnologist Andrew Hessel, examined the organisational and governance implications of synthetic biology before the technology entered mainstream strategy conversations. Both were recognised externally: The Big Nine was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year; The Genesis Machine was named by The New Yorker as one of the year’s best nonfiction works. Her access to the rooms where technology governance is being decided is direct and ongoing. As an advisor to the White House, European Union, and United Nations, and as a founding member of the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Foresight Advisory Board, Webb’s work informs global technology policy – not as periodic input but as sustained engagement. Her annual Tech Trends Report, tracking more than 700 emerging technology and science developments, is downloaded more than one million times a year. Ranked third on Thinkers50’s 2025 list of the world’s most influential management thinkers, Webb teaches strategic foresight at NYU Stern’s MBA programme and holds a visiting fellowship at Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Her current framework, “living intelligence” – the convergence of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and advanced sensors – maps the technology supercycle she argues is already underway. For organisations whose long-range strategy begins and ends with AI, it is a substantive challenge to the scope of their thinking. Key speaking topics Quantitative strategic foresight Artificial intelligence and the global technology power landscape Living intelligence: AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors Technology supercycles and long-horizon planning Geopolitics of emerging technology Futures methodology and organisational decision-making Synthetic biology and the next frontier of disruption Ideal for C-suite and boards developing long-range technology and competitive strategy Chief Strategy Officers and innovation leads rethinking their approach to uncertainty and futures planning Government, regulatory, and policy audiences responsible for technology governance Risk, investment, and scenario-planning teams assessing the strategic implications of AI and converging technologies Audience outcomes A clear analytical method for distinguishing which emerging technology signals warrant a strategic response – and which represent noise Understanding of the “living intelligence” framework and why the convergence of AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors represents a broader challenge than current AI strategy typically accounts for A structural vocabulary for the global AI power landscape – particularly the dynamics between major US and Chinese technology actors – that simplifies a complex geopolitical issue for non-specialist leaders Familiarity with the Tech Trends methodology: how to scan, filter, and prioritise signals across a large and rapidly evolving technology landscape Practical frameworks for building a long-horizon foresight capability internally, rather than depending on periodic external consultancy

Why organisations work with Zhang Jun He reads China’s economy from inside its policy apparatus, sitting on the Shanghai Municipal Government’s Special Advisory Committee and having briefed Premier Li Keqiang directly in 2015. His thesis in End of Hyper Growth in China? (Palgrave, 2016) is a specific, defensible counter-position on Chinese consumption data and structural imbalance, not a directional take. He won the 2018 Bergson Prize from the Association for Comparative Economic Studies, the field’s recognised award for serious comparative work on transition economies. He has held visiting positions at LSE, Harvard, Yale, SOAS and UNU-WIDER, so he writes and speaks for Western analytic audiences without losing the China interior view. He has written 70 commentaries for Project Syndicate since 2005 and contributes regularly to the South China Morning Post and the World Economic Forum agenda, which means his framing is already legible to senior international readers. Biography highlights Dean, School of Economics, Fudan University; Cheung-Jiang Professor of Economics. Founding Director, China Center for Economic Studies (CCES), Fudan. Member, Special Advisory Committee to the Shanghai Municipal Government. Bergson Prize (2018), Association for Comparative Economic Studies; China Economics Innovation Prize (2015) with Justin Yifu Lin and Fan Gang. Author of End of Hyper Growth in China? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Unfinished Reforms of the Chinese Economy (World Scientific, 2013). Project Syndicate columnist since 2005; contributor to SCMP and the World Economic Forum. Biography Most foreign reads of the Chinese economy are constructed from data releases, export figures, and a handful of much-quoted Western analysts. Zhang Jun’s view is constructed from inside the room. He sits on the Shanghai Municipal Government’s Special Advisory Committee and was one of three economists chosen in 2015 for a direct dialogue with Premier Li Keqiang on macroeconomic policy. As Dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University and founding Director of the China Center for Economic Studies, he runs one of mainland China’s most serious institutional platforms for analysing the country’s growth model. His 2016 Palgrave book End of Hyper Growth in China? made a specific counter-argument against the consensus that China’s reliance on investment and low consumption made its growth unsustainable. The 2018 Bergson Prize from the Association for Comparative Economic Studies recognised his comparative work in the same field. Zhang publishes for international readers as well as Chinese ones. He has been a Project Syndicate columnist since 2005, with more than 70 commentaries, and writes for the South China Morning Post and the World Economic Forum. Visiting positions at LSE, Harvard, Yale, SOAS and UNU-WIDER over the past two decades mean he speaks the analytic language of Western investment committees while reading Beijing’s policy moves at source. What this gives a boardroom is rare: a voice on China who is neither cheerleading nor catastrophising, who has skin in the policy debate, and who can tell a foreign audience which structural reform signals from Beijing are real and which are rhetorical. Key speaking topics China’s growth model and the post-hyper-growth economy Structural reform and the policy direction of Beijing Chinese consumption, savings, and household demand Supply-side reform and industrial competitiveness China and the global economy: trade, capital, supply chains Shanghai and the role of regional governance in Chinese reform Ideal for Boards and investment committees weighing China exposure or repositioning regional strategy CFOs and Chief Strategy Officers in firms with significant China-linked supply chains or revenue Banks, asset managers and sovereign investors with active China allocations Senior policy and government audiences engaging with Chinese counterparts Audience outcomes A specific read on what Beijing’s current reform signals actually mean for capital allocation in China A sharper sense of which Western narratives about Chinese consumption, debt and growth are overstated and which hold up Direct context on how Shanghai’s policy apparatus thinks about reform priorities and foreign investment Better questions to take into the next China-strategy conversation at executive committee or board level

Why organisations work with Yu Yongding He sat inside China’s central bank monetary policy deliberations (2004–2006) and inside the post-crisis UN commission that attempted to redesign the global financial architecture – a combination no Western-based economist on China can replicate His publicly argued position that China’s US Treasury holdings generate negative real returns and constitute a geopolitical liability gives boards and investment committees a named, verified analytical framework – not commentary, but a specific thesis with a public record His analysis consistently diverges from both official Chinese positions and from prevailing Western narratives, which is precisely what makes it useful for stress-testing institutional assumptions about China’s trajectory He has published alongside Barry Eichengreen, Raghuram Rajan, and Jean Pisani-Ferry at Bruegel, and contributes regularly to Project Syndicate, meaning his arguments are already in circulation in the rooms where senior policy and investment decisions are made As editor-in-chief of China and World Economy and former Director-General of IWEP, he has shaped the research agenda that feeds into Chinese policymaking: he knows not just the conclusions but the institutional reasoning behind them Biography highlights Academician, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; D.Phil. in economics, University of Oxford (1994) Director-General, Institute of World Economics and Politics (IWEP), CASS – China’s leading international economics research institution – for over a decade, 1998–2009 Member, Monetary Policy Committee, People’s Bank of China, 2004–2006 President, China Society of World Economy, 2003–2011 Member, UN Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System (Stiglitz Commission), convened in response to the 2008 global financial crisis Member, UN High-Level Panel on Financial Accountability, Transparency, and Integrity (FACTI Panel) Regular contributor to Project Syndicate, South China Morning Post, Wire China, and Bruegel; published alongside Eichengreen, Rajan, and Pisani-Ferry Editor-in-chief, China and World Economy (Wiley); also editor-in-chief of World Economy and International Review of Economics Biography The global reserve currency system has a structural problem that most institutional risk frameworks are not built to assess. The US dollar’s dominant position rests on arrangements; surplus-country accumulation of US Treasuries, capital account conventions, and geopolitical assumptions that are under visible strain. The economists who advise China’s central bank and finance ministries have been debating this openly for two decades. Their conclusions rarely reach Western boardrooms with the precision or independence that makes them actionable. Yu Yongding’s career has placed him at the centre of that debate, on both sides of it. As Director-General of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at CASS from 1998 to 2009, he led the institution that shapes China’s engagement with international economic policy. As a member of the People’s Bank of China Monetary Policy Committee from 2004 to 2006, he participated directly in the monetary decisions of one of the world’s most consequential central banks. Few economists working on China have held both roles. His analytical contribution is specific and verifiable. He has argued publicly that China’s accumulation of US Treasuries constitutes a structural misallocation, producing negative real returns while creating the kind of geopolitical vulnerability that became concrete when US sanctions froze Russian central bank assets. He has written on the Mundell-Fleming trilemma as it applies to China’s exchange rate constraints, on the conditions for sustainable Chinese growth, and on the reform of the international monetary architecture. These arguments are his own; they sometimes diverge from official Chinese positions, which is what gives them credibility for external audiences. He contributed to the Stiglitz Commission’s post-2008 work on reforming the international monetary and financial system, and served on the UN FACTI Panel on financial accountability for sustainable development. His published work appears in Project Syndicate, the South China Morning Post, East Asia Forum, and Bruegel, where he has co-authored with Barry Eichengreen, Raghuram Rajan, and Jean Pisani-Ferry. He holds a D.Phil. in economics from Oxford and is editor-in-chief of the Wiley journal China and World Economy. Key speaking topics China’s macroeconomic framework and growth trajectory Global reserve currency system and dollar dependency RMB internationalisation and capital account reform Exchange rate policy and the Mundell-Fleming trilemma Reform of the international monetary and financial system China’s foreign exchange reserves: composition, risk, and strategy Financial stability and systemic risk in the global economy Post-crisis international economic governance Ideal for Senior investment committees and sovereign wealth fund leadership assessing China exposure or dollar-denominated reserve strategy Central bank governors, finance ministry officials, and financial regulators engaged in monetary policy or international monetary reform Global risk forums and geopolitical strategy sessions where China’s macroeconomic trajectory is a first-order variable International financial institutions and policy bodies working on the architecture of the global financial system Audience outcomes A specific, independently argued framework for assessing the structural vulnerabilities in China’s monetary position, not a summary of official positions Clearer analytical language around the dollar’s reserve status and the conditions under which it is likely to erode A more precise understanding of the policy tensions inside China’s macroeconomic framework: exchange rate, demand management, fiscal space, and reserve composition Context for interpreting China’s monetary and fiscal policy signals that goes beyond what circulates in Western financial media Familiarity with the arguments shaping China’s policy debates, including the positions that diverge from official government framing

Why organisations work with Xiao Geng Sustained insider access to Chinese policy and regulatory thinking, built across roles at the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, HSBC Bank China, and senior positions at Brookings, Fung Global Institute, and Columbia Global Centers East Asia. A live, monthly published view on the US-China economic relationship through more than a decade of Project Syndicate commentary co-authored with Andrew Sheng. Founding leadership of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, one of the few institutional bridges between Western policy research and Chinese government economic thinking. Research depth across the technical questions that drive China exposure for foreign capital: exchange rate policy, capital market reform, enterprise productivity, and urbanisation. A working position inside the Greater Bay Area policy network through CUHK Shenzhen and the Shenzhen Finance Institute, giving leaders a sightline into where China’s innovation and finance corridors are heading. Biography highlights President of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance. Professor of Practice at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Director of the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute. Director of the Research Institute of Maritime Silk-Road at Peking University HSBC Business School. Founding Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Former Vice President for China at the Fung Global Institute and Director of Columbia Global Centers East Asia. Project Syndicate columnist since 2012, with more than 140 published commentaries on China and the global economy. Biography Most foreign boards still treat China as a single risk vector. The economy is more fragmented than that, and the policy logic shaping it does not move on the cycles Western investors are used to reading. A serious view of capital allocation in Asia depends on understanding how monetary policy, financial reform, and political economy interact inside Beijing’s system, not just what is announced. Xiao Geng has spent his career sitting inside that system. He is President of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance and Professor of Practice at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, where he directs the Institute of Policy and Practice at the Shenzhen Finance Institute. He also leads the Research Institute of Maritime Silk-Road at Peking University HSBC Business School. His earlier roles built the institutional reach. He was Founding Director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Vice President for China at the Fung Global Institute, and Director of Columbia Global Centers East Asia. Inside the Hong Kong system he served as Head of Research at the Securities and Futures Commission. He has advised HSBC Bank China, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme. Since 2012 he has written a monthly Project Syndicate column with Andrew Sheng, covering Chinese monetary policy, technology competition, energy transition, and the financial architecture of the US-China relationship. The column is one of the few sustained English-language readings of Chinese economic policy written from inside it. Key speaking topics China’s macroeconomic outlook US-China economic and financial relations Chinese financial sector reform and regulation Capital markets and exchange rate policy in Asia Urbanisation, enterprise productivity, and the Greater Bay Area Geopolitical risk for foreign investors in China Ideal for Boards and investment committees with material China or Asia exposure CFOs, treasurers, and heads of corporate strategy reviewing supply chain or capital allocation in Asia Financial services leadership briefings on regulatory and macro direction Government, multilateral, and policy audiences working on US-China economic questions Audience outcomes A clearer read of where Chinese monetary, fiscal, and financial reform is actually heading, not what headlines suggest A working framework for the structural drivers of US-China economic tension and where they sit on the cycle Specific signals to watch on capital flows, exchange rate policy, and Chinese capital market opening A more accurate map of the policy actors and institutions that shape China’s economic decisions An informed basis for stress-testing investment, supply chain, and partnership decisions tied to Greater China

Why organisations work with Will Hutton Three decades of macro-economic analysis tested in public, from The State We’re In in 1995 through This Time No Mistakes in 2024, so the framework is not a recent rebrand. A working seat inside the institutions that shape British policy: the Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector, the Commission on Creative Industries, the EU Kok Commission, and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research. A genuinely structural argument on corporate purpose through The Purposeful Company, used by boards rethinking governance, executive pay and stakeholder accountability. Editorial and broadcast judgement built over years as Editor-in-Chief of The Observer and Economics Editor at Newsnight, which makes him unusually clear on which economic stories matter and which do not. Equally credible on China, Europe and the United States, so a board worrying about exposure across all three gets one coherent analysis rather than three partial ones. Biography highlights President of the Academy of Social Sciences. Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, 2011 to 2020. Co-chair of The Purposeful Company; co-founder and chair of the Big Innovation Centre. Former Chief Executive of The Work Foundation; former Editor-in-Chief of The Observer; former Economics Editor of BBC Newsnight and The Guardian. Author of seven books on political economy, including The State We’re In (1995) and This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain (2024). Chair of the Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector (2010 to 2011) and the Commission on Creative Industries (2007); rapporteur to the EU Kok Commission (2004). Biography The State We’re In sold more copies than any British political-economy book since 1945. It set the terms of a debate, on short-termism, on the costs of financialised capitalism, on what serious institutional reform would look like, that the country has been having ever since. Thirty years later, This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain returns to the same argument under new conditions and was reviewed in the Financial Times, the LSE Review of Books and the Literary Review. What sits behind both books is an unusually wide working footprint. Hutton has been Editor-in-Chief of The Observer, Economics Editor at Newsnight and The Guardian, Chief Executive of The Work Foundation, and Principal of Hertford College, Oxford. He chaired the Hutton Review of Fair Pay in the Public Sector for the Coalition government and the Commission on Creative Industries for the Labour government, and was rapporteur to the EU Kok Commission. The current focus is institutional. As co-chair of The Purposeful Company he works with boards and asset managers on what corporate purpose, governance and executive pay should look like if shareholder primacy is no longer the working assumption. As President of the Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Big Innovation Centre, he sits across the British social science and innovation policy systems. For senior audiences, the value is in the synthesis. Hutton reads China, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom as one connected system, and his Observer column is the long-running test bed. A board trying to make capital, governance and political-risk decisions in that environment gets a single coherent reading from a single voice with thirty years of public track record. Key speaking topics The British and European political economy Corporate purpose, governance and executive pay China, the United States and the future of the global economy Stakeholder capitalism and institutional reform The future of work and the social contract Innovation policy and industrial strategy Fairness, inequality and public sector reform Ideal for Boards and executive committees of UK and European corporates assessing geopolitical and macro exposure Asset managers, pension funds and institutional investors recalibrating governance and stewardship expectations Government, regulator and think-tank audiences working on industrial strategy, public sector reform or corporate governance Senior leadership programmes at business schools and professional services firms Audience outcomes A working map of how the British, European, Chinese and US economies now connect, and where the pressure points sit A clear view of what corporate purpose and stakeholder governance mean in practice for board agendas, pay and stewardship An informed reading of how UK political and policy shifts feed through to corporate operating conditions A sharper sense of which economic news is structural and which is noise

Why organisations work with Vítor Constâncio He offers direct insider perspective on ECB monetary policy design and execution across an eight-year term as Vice-President: a vantage point that cannot be replicated by academic analysis or market commentary alone. His active role in building the ECB’s macroprudential governance framework, including the development of its systemic risk indicators (FSRI and CSRI), gives audiences a conceptual map for understanding financial stability risk that goes beyond standard risk management frameworks. His unusual combination of central bank leadership, national finance ministry experience, and private-sector board roles provides a rare triangulation of how monetary, fiscal, and regulatory decisions interact; directly relevant to boards navigating rate cycles, sovereign risk, and banking regulation. Through his Bruegel contributions and MacroViews Substack, he remains an active, citable analyst on current ECB and Fed policy, eurozone fiscal governance, and international financial risk: making his perspective current, not merely historical. For European and internationally exposed organisations, his forensic understanding of euro area crisis mechanics, including Portugal’s €78bn bailout programme, Banking Union design, and Capital Markets Union architecture, offers a level of granularity that generic economic speakers cannot match. Biography highlights Vice-President of the European Central Bank and member of its Executive Board, 2010-2018, selected by Eurozone finance ministers for an eight-year mandate Governor of the Banco de Portugal in two separate terms (1985-86 and 2000-2010); member of the ECB Governing Council throughout the second term Finance Minister of Portugal (1977-78) and Secretary of State for Planning and Budget (1974-76) Secretary-General of Portugal’s Socialist Party (1986-89) and member of the Portuguese Council of State (1995-99) Co-architect of the ECB’s macroprudential governance framework; named author of ECB Occasional Paper on macroprudential policy at the ECB; developer of the ECB’s Financial Stability Risk Index and Cyclical Systemic Risk Indicator Professor at the School of Economics & Business Administration, University of Navarra; President of the School Board, ISEG – Lisbon School of Economics and Management, University of Lisbon Active contributor to Bruegel policy debates; extensive BIS-published speech record; author of MacroViews (Substack), a widely-read publication on monetary policy and European economic governance Biography Central banks rarely advertise the tensions behind their decisions. The trade-offs between price stability and financial stability, the institutional pressures on monetary union governance, the limits of macroprudential tools when the financial cycle turns: these are not visible in official communiqués. They are visible only to those who have sat inside the institution at the moments when those decisions were made. Vítor Constâncio served as Vice-President of the European Central Bank for eight years, from 2010 to 2018, a period that encompassed the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the design and early operation of the Banking Union, and the gradual construction of a macroprudential policy architecture for the euro area. As a member of the ECB’s Executive Board, he was among the principal architects of the framework that now governs systemic risk oversight across European financial markets; including the ECB’s own Financial Stability Risk Index and Cyclical Systemic Risk Indicator, developed under his leadership. His authority on these questions is grounded in institutional breadth as much as seniority. He served as Governor of the Banco de Portugal across two separate terms, representing Portugal on the ECB Governing Council throughout the second; held senior government roles as Finance Minister and Secretary of State; and served as Executive Director at Banco Português de Investimento with non-executive board exposure to major Portuguese corporates. This layered experience – from national treasury to private board to European monetary authority – gives him a perspective on how macroeconomic policy, financial regulation, and institutional design interact that few practitioners can claim. Since leaving the ECB, Constâncio has remained an analytically active voice. He publishes regularly on monetary policy and eurozone governance through his MacroViews commentary platform and continues to contribute to Bruegel, the leading European economic policy research institution. He teaches banking and financial regulation at the University of Navarra and chairs the school board at ISEG. For organisations seeking clarity on the forces shaping credit conditions, regulatory direction, and European financial architecture, he brings the rarest combination available: the institutional memory of someone at the centre of the decisions, and the continued intellectual engagement of someone who has not stopped thinking about them. Key speaking topics Monetary policy design and the limits of central banking Macroprudential policy and systemic risk frameworks European financial governance and Banking Union architecture Sovereign risk and euro area crisis management Banking regulation and the post-Basel III landscape Capital Markets Union and European financial integration Global macro conditions and the outlook for interest rates Ideal for CFOs, CROs, and board risk committees at banks, insurers, and asset managers navigating rate cycles and regulatory change Investment and treasury leaders requiring granular perspective on ECB and eurozone monetary dynamics Government and supranational policy forums focused on European financial architecture and sovereign risk Executive leadership conferences in financial services where strategic macro context is central to the agenda Audience outcomes A clearer understanding of how macroprudential policy frameworks function and where their limits lie – grounded in the experience of building them Practical perspective on how central bank decisions are actually made: the trade-offs, institutional constraints, and dissenting pressures that official statements do not capture An informed view of the structural risks in European and global financial systems, and the regulatory tools available to address them Greater ability to distinguish signal from noise in central bank communication and monetary policy signalling Context for assessing how eurozone governance, Banking Union architecture, and Capital Markets Union development affect corporate and institutional financial strategy

Why organisations work with Václav Klaus He is the primary architect of the Czech Republic’s post-communist economic transition, not as an external adviser, but as the Finance Minister who designed it, the Prime Minister who implemented it, and the President who observed its long-run consequences. No other figure on the international speaking circuit holds that complete a first-person record of a major market transformation. His sustained, published intellectual case, developed across books including Europe: The Shattering of Illusions and a decade of presidential addresses that EU supranational governance creates structural democratic deficits offers boards a coherent counter-framework to mainstream European institutional narratives. His analysis of the relationship between regulatory ideology and economic freedom, framed from the position of a practising economist who held executive power, gives risk and strategy teams a perspective that is distinct from both academic economics and professional political commentary. As a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society tradition and a consistent critic of consensus-driven policy, he surfaces the assumptions embedded in mainstream geopolitical and economic risk frameworks, which is precisely what senior decision-makers need when those frameworks are under stress. Biography highlights Second President of the Czech Republic, serving two full terms (2003–2013) First Prime Minister of the independent Czech Republic (1993–1998); previously Prime Minister under the Czechoslovak federation (1992–1993) First non-communist Finance Minister of Czechoslovakia following the Velvet Revolution (1989–1992) Principal co-founder and chairman (1991–2002) of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Czech Republic’s primary centre-right party PhD in Economics, Czech Academy of Sciences; Professor of Finance, University of Economics, Prague Author of more than 30 books, including Blue Planet in Green Shackles (Competitive Enterprise Institute) and Europe: The Shattering of Illusions (Bloomsbury) Contributor to the Financial Times; keynote speaker at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Press Club, Washington D.C. Founder of the Václav Klaus Institute; member of the Mont Pelerin Society Biography The question of how a country transitions from a centrally planned economy to a functioning market, and what that process reveals about the relationship between political institutions, economic policy, and individual freedom, has preoccupied Václav Klaus for his entire career. It is not an abstract question for him. As Czechoslovakia’s first non-communist Finance Minister from 1989, as the Prime Minister who managed the peaceful dissolution of the federation and guided the Czech Republic through its founding years, and as a two-term President, he lived the consequences of every decision he and his colleagues made. His contribution to post-communist economic theory was substantive and contested. The voucher privatisation programme he championed as Prime Minister transferred shares in over 1,800 state enterprises to more than six million Czech citizens in three years: the most radical monetarist reform programme undertaken by any former Comecon state, according to Oxford Reference. The programme’s outcomes – both its achievements and its limitations – remain a core reference point in debates about transition economics and the sequencing of institutional and market reform. Beyond the Czech experience, Klaus has developed a consistent and systematic critique of supranational governance that distinguishes him from most former heads of state on the international circuit. His book Europe: The Shattering of Illusions and his decade of presidential statements argue that the EU’s integration model generates a structural democratic deficit: that decisions affecting citizens are progressively removed from accountable national institutions and transferred to bodies that cannot be held to account through normal democratic mechanisms. This is not a position he arrived at recently; it was central to his resistance to the Lisbon Treaty and to his public intellectual work throughout his presidency. His analytical frame, rooted in the free-market tradition of Hayek and Friedman, positions him as a consistent critic of consensus-driven policy thinking – on European integration, on climate regulation, and on the trade-offs between regulatory ambition and economic freedom. For boards and senior strategy teams working to understand the structural forces behind today’s geopolitical fragmentation, his perspective offers something genuinely scarce: a first-person account of what happens when political institutions, economic doctrine, and sovereign interests collide. Key speaking topics Post-communist economic transformation and market transition National sovereignty and the limits of supranational governance European political and institutional fragmentation Fiscal and monetary policy in practice The political economy of climate and environmental regulation Geopolitical risk and the return of economic nationalism The relationship between political institutions and economic freedom Ideal for Boards and C-suite teams in financial services, energy, and industrial sectors with significant European or Central and Eastern European exposure Government relations, public affairs, and policy teams navigating regulatory and geopolitical risk Senior strategy and scenario planning functions working on European institutional risk Organisations convening executive or leadership audiences on geopolitics, sovereign risk, or the future of the multilateral economic order Audience outcomes A first-hand, practitioner-level account of how post-communist economic transformation was designed and executed – including what worked, what did not, and what the trade-offs reveal about sequencing institutional and market reform A developed analytical framework for understanding the structural tensions between national sovereignty and supranational governance, grounded in lived political experience rather than theoretical modelling A counter-perspective to mainstream consensus on European institutional development – useful for stress-testing assumptions embedded in geopolitical risk and scenario planning work Greater clarity on the political and ideological drivers behind regulatory trends in climate, energy, and fiscal policy, framed through the lens of economic freedom and democratic accountability Historical and structural context for the fragmentation currently visible in European and global governance, from a figure who anticipated and publicly argued for its likelihood

Why organisations work with Tim Willcox Two decades of live BBC anchoring on the stories boards now name as risk: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan crisis, Ukraine, Brexit. He has interviewed the principals, not just read the wires. Conference moderator credits at IATA World Aviation Day, World Travel and Tourism Council, World Science Forum, the Emirates Literature Festival and the ipSoft AI Conference. Senior international audiences, technical content, multilingual rooms. Media training and crisis-communication coaching for executives at Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Direct experience of how a board sounds, and fails to sound, under pressure from a journalist. Fluent Spanish and conversational French, with first-hand reporting from Chile, Spain, Argentina, Libya, Egypt, Japan and the Philippines. Useful in any conference room that is not solely Anglophone. A trained newsroom interviewer, not a celebrity host. He extracts content from senior executives rather than displacing them. Biography highlights Twenty-plus years as a BBC News anchor across BBC One, BBC World News, the BBC News Channel, BBC Four and BBC radio. Former ITN Arts and Media Correspondent whose field reporting ran from the 1994 Rwanda genocide to Iraq under Saddam Hussein; presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and was the first ITN journalist to break news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales. Live BBC anchor on the 2010 Chilean mining rescue, the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, the 2011 Libyan civil war and the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Conference chair credits include IATA World Aviation Day (Mauritius), World Travel and Tourism Council (Buenos Aires), World Science Forum (Jordan), ipSoft AI Conference (Barcelona), Emirates Literature Festival (Dubai), Maritime Standard Awards (Dubai) and NHS Expo (Manchester). Media training and crisis-communications coaching for Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, Crown Prosecution Service, Severn Trent Water, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office. Documentaries for Channel 4 and Channel 5; began on Fleet Street writing for The Times, The Telegraph, Mirror Group, the Financial Times and The Spectator. Biography The chair of a senior conference is the variable that decides whether a panel becomes a frank discussion or a sequence of pre-cleared talking points. Tim Willcox spent more than twenty years as a BBC News anchor running live interviews under deadline, including with sitting heads of state, and that is the craft he brings to a corporate room. His on-air career covered the stories that now sit on board risk registers: the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Libyan civil war, the Athens bailout, the Catalan independence crisis, the Ukraine war, Brexit. Before the BBC he was ITN’s Arts and Media Correspondent, reporting from the front line of the 1994 Rwanda genocide and from Iraq under Saddam Hussein. He presented live from New York during the 9/11 attacks and broke news of the Paris crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales. That ground translates directly to international conference work. He has chaired at IATA World Aviation Day in Mauritius, the World Travel and Tourism Council summit in Buenos Aires, the World Science Forum in Jordan, the ipSoft AI Conference in Barcelona and the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai. He works in fluent Spanish and reasonable French, which matters when the audience is not solely Anglophone. The third strand is media training. Novartis, HSBC, BT, Nationwide, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Audit Office have used him to coach executives on hostile interviews and crisis communications. The value is the same as on stage: a trained newsroom interviewer who knows exactly how a board sounds when it is not ready. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and live news literacy for boards Crisis communications and executive media performance Leadership under live media scrutiny International conference moderation and panel facilitation Awards and after-dinner hosting Reporting on the front line: lessons from twenty years of breaking news Spanish and Latin American business and political coverage Ideal for Boards and ExCos commissioning a chair for senior off-sites on geopolitical, regulatory or reputational risk CEOs, CFOs and Chief Communications Officers preparing for hostile media or crisis press conferences International industry associations running multilingual flagship summits and awards Conference programmers needing a moderator who can carry a head-of-state interview as readily as a panel of operators Audience outcomes A moderated panel that produces actual exchange between senior speakers, not parallel monologues Sharper executive performance under journalist-style questioning A working sense of how a live news cycle interprets a corporate statement and where the pressure points sit Specific reporting examples (Egypt, Libya, Chile, Catalonia, Brexit) that connect macro events to commercial decisions A flagship event held to BBC interviewing standards from the chair

Why organisations work with Tim Sebastian Most geopolitical commentary tells leaders what to think. Sebastian built his career on asking the questions political leaders didn’t prepare for – and brings that same interrogative discipline, along with the preparation that goes with it, directly into corporate forums. As founder of both The Doha Debates (BBC World News, 2004–2012) and The New Arab Debates (Deutsche Welle, 2011–2015), he designed and chaired globally broadcast forums on the most contested political and social issues of those years – a structural model directly applicable to executive events dealing with divided stakeholder views. His field experience – covering the Solidarity revolution in Warsaw, reporting from Moscow until the Soviet authorities expelled him in 1985, then Washington through the end of the Cold War – means his reading of political risk is grounded in how authoritarian and transitional political systems actually behave, not in how they present themselves. Where panels typically produce managed consensus, Sebastian’s approach – documented in testimonials from the World Bank, the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, and the Sharjah International Government Communications Forum – consistently surfaces real disagreement and genuine answers from senior participants. Biography highlights Original presenter of HARDtalk, BBC World, March 1997 to March 2007; subjects included US Presidents Clinton, Carter and Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lee Kuan Yew, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu Founder and chairman of The Doha Debates (Qatar Foundation / BBC World News, 2004–2012) – the highest-rated weekend programme on BBC World News during its run Founder of The New Arab Debates (Deutsche Welle, 2011–2015); currently hosts Conflict Zone, Deutsche Welle’s flagship political interview programme BBC foreign correspondent in Warsaw (covering the Solidarity revolution), Moscow and Washington; expelled from the USSR by Soviet authorities in 1985 BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award (1981); Royal Television Society Television Journalist of the Year (1982); RTS Interviewer of the Year (2000 and 2001) BA Honours, Modern Languages, New College Oxford; Fellow Commoner, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 2015–16 Author of eight novels and two non-fiction books; contributor to the Mail on Sunday, Sunday Times and New York Times Biography Political leaders rarely say what they mean in public. The gap between declared position and actual intent is where strategic risk lives – and where most corporate scenario-planning stops. Tim Sebastian has spent four decades on the other side of that gap. As the original presenter of HARDtalk from 1997 to 2007, Sebastian established the template for rigorous political accountability on international television. His subjects included Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lee Kuan Yew and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The preparation was meticulous. The questions were the ones nobody else was asking. Before the studios, there was the field. Sebastian reported for the BBC from Warsaw during the Solidarity revolution, was stationed in Moscow until Soviet authorities expelled him in 1985, and covered Washington through the final years of the Cold War. That direct experience of political systems under pressure – their vulnerabilities, their rhetorical strategies, their relationship to transparency – underpins everything he subsequently built. In 2004, he founded The Doha Debates under the Qatar Foundation: a globally broadcast forum for contested political and social issues that became the highest-rated weekend programme on BBC World News. When the Arab Spring began in 2011, he launched The New Arab Debates in Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. For organisations navigating politically complex strategy across markets where regulatory intent, diplomatic tension and conflict risk are live variables, Sebastian’s value is structural as much as analytical. He knows how leaders behave when held to account in public. He knows how to design forums that produce real answers rather than prepared ones. He currently hosts Conflict Zone on Deutsche Welle, and has moderated major events for the World Bank, the Open Government Partnership and the Sharjah International Government Communications Forum. Key speaking topics Geopolitical risk and international affairs Political leadership and accountability Structured debate and forum design Conflict, diplomacy and international security The Middle East and Arab world politics Global power dynamics and strategic risk Media scrutiny and leadership communication Ideal for Senior leadership and board-level conferences where geopolitical context is central to strategy Government, policy and international affairs audiences Organisations operating in or expanding into politically complex or high-risk markets Events requiring a moderator for high-stakes, multi-stakeholder panels or debates Audience outcomes A clearer framework for reading political intent behind public positions – from governments, regulators and international actors Direct exposure to how political leaders respond under structured, uncompromising questioning – and what that reveals about how decisions are actually made Practical understanding of how structured debate can surface genuine strategic disagreement rather than managed consensus Greater confidence in treating geopolitical risk as a board-level strategic variable, with tools for interrogating it rather than simply monitoring it

Why organisations work with Tim Bouverie A prize-winning historian whose two books, Appeasing Hitler and the Duff Cooper Prize-winning Allies at War, sit on exactly the questions boards now face: when to confront, when to compromise, and how to hold a fragile coalition together. Trained as a political journalist at Channel 4 News under Michael Crick, so the material is delivered as argument and narrative, not lecture. Brings a specific, named angle on negotiation: the Big Three at Tehran and Yalta as a working case study for M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration. Comfortable in serious rooms. Has interviewed George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson on stage at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and lectures regularly across the UK and US, including at the Hoover Institution. An Oxford-trained historian (Christ Church, Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s) whose readership includes Max Hastings, Antony Beevor and Margaret MacMillan, all of whom have publicly endorsed the work. Biography highlights Author of Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (Bodley Head, 2019), Sunday Times bestseller, Orwell Prize shortlist. Author of Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler (Bodley Head), winner of the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize. Christ Church, Oxford. 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford. Political journalist at Channel 4 News, 2013-2017, working with Michael Crick on Dispatches and covering two general elections, the Scottish referendum and the EU referendum. Regular contributor of book reviews on history and politics to the Spectator, the Observer and the Daily Telegraph. Speaker and interviewer at the Chalke Valley History Festival and at the Hoover Institution, with public sessions alongside George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson. Biography The diplomatic record of the 1930s is one of the best-documented examples of senior decision-makers misreading a hostile counterparty. It is also one of the most relevant to today’s boardroom. Tim Bouverie’s first book, Appeasing Hitler, took that record apart in detail, working from cabinet papers, private diaries and Foreign Office files to show how a generation of competent, well-informed leaders talked themselves into a strategic disaster. The book became a Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. His second, Allies at War: The Politics of Defeating Hitler, drew on more than a hundred archives to reconstruct the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin coalition as the brittle, mistrustful negotiation it actually was. It won the 2026 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize, one of the most credited awards in narrative non-fiction. The training behind the work matters to a corporate audience. Bouverie read history at Christ Church, Oxford, and held the 2020-21 Alistair Horne Visiting Fellowship at St Antony’s College. Before the books, he spent four and a half years as a political journalist at Channel 4 News, working with Michael Crick across two general elections and the Scottish and EU referendums. The combination shows up in the keynotes: archival depth, delivered with a working journalist’s instinct for argument. On stage he is a fluent interviewer as well as a lecturer, having questioned George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson at the Chalke Valley History Festival, and presented at the Hoover Institution and at festivals across the United States. The signature talks pull directly from the books: appeasement as a study in strategic miscalculation, and the Big Three as a working manual on how to negotiate inside an alliance you cannot afford to walk away from. Key speaking topics Lessons from appeasement and strategic miscalculation Alliance management and coalition negotiation Leadership decisions under geopolitical pressure Diplomatic history of the Second World War The fragility of the rules-based order Negotiation in M&A, joint ventures and competitive collaboration Narrative history and archival research Ideal for Board and ExCo offsites focused on geopolitical risk and long-horizon strategy CEO and senior leadership audiences negotiating major partnerships, alliances or M&A Heads of strategy, government affairs and corporate affairs working on sanctions, China exposure and political risk After-dinner audiences at industry conferences where intellectual seriousness is part of the brief Audience outcomes A sharper read on how senior leaders misjudge hostile counterparties, with named historical examples that stick. Specific lessons from the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin alliance applicable to coalition negotiations today. A historical frame for current debates on the rules-based order, sanctions and Western unity that goes beyond the news cycle. A model for how to use evidence and narrative together when communicating high-stakes decisions internally.

Why organisations work with Thomas Piketty He owns the primary dataset. The World Inequality Database, which he co-directs from the Paris School of Economics, is the reference series most finance ministries and international institutions cite when modelling distribution. His arguments have moved policy. Capital in the Twenty-First Century reset the global conversation on wealth taxation, inheritance and progressive capital rules at the OECD, EU and G20 level. He works at a 250-year time horizon. Boards modelling political risk, sovereign debt sustainability or long-run capital returns get a frame that goes well beyond standard cycle analysis. He is independent of national political circuits. He declined the French Legion d’Honneur in 2015, and his credibility with European, US and emerging-market audiences rests on that distance from government. A senior buyer gets an economist who has both the academic standing (EHESS, PSE, LSE) and the public reach to engage a leadership team on inequality without flattening it into a slogan. Biography highlights Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and the Paris School of Economics. Centennial Professor at the LSE International Inequalities Institute since 2015. Co-director of the World Inequality Lab and the World Inequality Database. Author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Capital and Ideology, and A Brief History of Equality, all published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Recipient of the Yrjo Jahnsson Award (2013) and the British Academy Medal (2014). Delivered the Ellen McArthur Lectures at the University of Cambridge Faculty of History in 2025. Biography The distribution of wealth is not a side-effect of growth. It is now the variable that shapes tax design, capital controls and the political tolerance for global business. Capital in the Twenty-First Century, published in 2014, made that case with 250 years of historical data and forced finance ministries, central banks and large investors to take inequality seriously as a risk factor. The author of that book runs the dataset behind the argument. The World Inequality Database, co-directed from the Paris School of Economics, is the reference series for income and wealth concentration used by the OECD, the European Commission and the IMF. Capital and Ideology in 2020 extended the analysis into a comparative history of inequality regimes, and A Brief History of Equality in 2022 distilled the argument into policy terms. His institutional base is unusual. He holds chairs at EHESS and the Paris School of Economics, is Centennial Professor at the LSE International Inequalities Institute, and taught earlier as an assistant professor at MIT. He declined the Legion d’Honneur in 2015, on the grounds that it was not the state’s role to decide who is honourable. For a senior audience, the value is direct. He gives boards a way to read inequality as a structural input into long-run capital allocation, regulatory exposure and political risk, drawn from the empirical work that has reshaped how governments think about taxation since 2014. Key speaking topics Income and wealth inequality Taxation and capital regulation Long-run capital returns and political risk The future of progressive taxation and inheritance Inequality in Europe, the US and emerging markets Macroeconomic policy and redistribution Globalisation, trade and capital mobility Ideal for Boards and investment committees price long-run political and policy risk into capital allocation. CFOs, heads of tax and group treasurers tracking the direction of corporate, capital and inheritance tax regimes. CEOs and strategy heads at multinational firms are exposed to shifting regulations on wealth, labour share and globalisation. Senior teams in banks, asset managers and sovereign investors that need a serious empirical frame on inequality. Audience outcomes A clear read of where wealth concentration is heading in major economies and what that implies for tax and regulation. A 250-year frame on capital returns, growth and inequality that sharpens long-horizon strategic decisions. A working understanding of the policy proposals (progressive capital tax, inheritance reform, tax transparency) under serious discussion at the OECD and EU. An independent academic perspective on the political conditions for global business, distinct from sell-side commentary. A direct exchange with one of the economists whose work is most cited by policymakers shaping the rules companies will operate under.

Why organisations work with Steven Sitao Xu A working chief economist at a Big Four firm in China, briefing on the same data, policy reads and forecasts that Deloitte uses with its own clients, not a retired view from outside. Two careers’ worth of forecasting: a decade running China forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, then more than a decade as Chief Economist of Deloitte China. Prior roles as Chief Economist for Asia at Societe Generale and Head of Economics at ICBC (Asia) give a markets-side reading that translates directly to CFO and treasury audiences. Used as a regular China commentator by CNBC, Bloomberg, CCTV, the Financial Times and YaleGlobal Online; the same voice editors trust on a deadline. A visiting scholar appointment at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a guest professorship at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management; the international and domestic Chinese reads of the same economy. Biography highlights Chief Economist and Partner, Deloitte China. Former Chief Representative in China and forecasting director, Economist Intelligence Unit, The Economist Group. Former Chief Economist for Asia at Societe Generale; former Head of Economics at ICBC (Asia). Visiting Scholar, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; guest professor at Tsinghua School of Economics and Management. Regular contributor on CNBC, Bloomberg, CCTV; bylines in the Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, YaleGlobal Online, Caijing, Caixin and 21st Century Business Herald. Education: Peking University (BA Economics), University of Connecticut (MA Economics), Boston College (MS Finance). Biography China is the single largest variable on most large boards’ five-year planning grids, and the data on it is contested. Official statistics, financial-market signals and policy direction often point in different directions in the same quarter. Boards need someone who can hold all three at once and translate them into operating implications. Steven Sitao Xu does that work day to day. As Chief Economist of Deloitte China, he leads the firm’s economic and industry research and is the voice Deloitte’s own clients hear when they want a calibrated read on Chinese growth, monetary policy and sectoral risk. The role sits inside live client decisions, not on a podium. The path to it was unusual in its breadth. Xu spent a decade as forecasting director of the Economist Intelligence Unit in China and Chief Representative for The Economist Group, before which he ran Asia economics for Societe Generale and headed economics at ICBC (Asia). That sequence gave him the editorial and the markets ear in the same career, which is why CNBC, Bloomberg, the Financial Times and CCTV come back to him for live commentary. His academic anchors connect both sides of the conversation: a visiting scholar appointment at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a guest professorship at Tsinghua’s School of Economics and Management. The result is a speaker who can sit with a CFO on currency exposure, a strategy team on consumer demand, and a board on the geopolitics behind both, without changing register. Key speaking topics China macro outlook and policy direction Chinese financial markets and currency Geopolitics and US-China economic relations Asia-Pacific economic trends Consumer and structural shifts in the Chinese economy Implications of Chinese policy for multinational strategy Ideal for Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material China revenue or supply exposure CFOs, treasurers and capital allocation committees pricing China risk Strategy and corporate development leaders evaluating China entry, scaling or exit Investor and partner conferences in financial services, manufacturing and consumer sectors Audience outcomes A current read on China’s growth trajectory, policy stance and financial-market signals from a working Big Four chief economist A clearer view of where official Chinese statistics, market pricing and policy intent agree and where they do not A framework for translating Chinese macro and policy moves into specific implications for revenue, supply chain and capital decisions An informed perspective on US-China economic friction and what it means operationally for non-Chinese firms