think ahead

BA (Oxford) PhD (MIT)

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk “What to Trust in a Post-Truth World” and the TEDx talks “The Pie-Growing Mindset” and “The Social Responsibility of Business” with a combined 2.8 million views. He serves as non-executive director of the Investor Forum, on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Investing, and on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee.

Alex’s book, “Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit”, was a Financial Times Book of the Year and has been translated into nine languages, and he is a co-author of “Principles of Corporate Finance” (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen). He has won 25 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

JEMBA2011

Chris Caldwell is an accomplished CEO and thought leader with over 15 years in the renewable energy and cleantech sectors. Leading United Renewables and Causeway Energy, he has brought to fruition over 40 green energy projects. A cleantech investor and host of the Conversations on Climate podcast, Chris also contributes to illuminem, a premier sustainability platform. Academically, he boasts credentials from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Law, London Business School, and Yale School of the Environment. With experience in both banking and law, Chris's mission centers on innovating and investing in solutions that make a substantial contribution to combating climate change.

MBA2009

Daniel is the Global Head of Sustainable Finance for the Corporate and Investment Bank at Barclays. A member of the CIB Management Team. He is creating a market leading center of excellence for sustainable finance to support clients navigate the opportunities and challenges of transitioning to a low carbon economy and to facilitate $1trn of Sustainable and Transition Financing by end of 2030.

Daniel is a member of the Sustainable Impact Capital Program Investment Committee, which is investing £500m in fast-growing, innovative and environmentally-focused early-stage technology companies by 2027. Daniel has worked for over two decades with clients on advisory, financing and capital markets and has helped raise billions of dollars for sustainable infrastructure and social development.

He has worked on many sustainable finance ‘firsts’ including the first sovereign blue bond, first climate transition bond for an Airline, the first sustainable finance framework for a sovereign wealth fund and the first private equity subscription line with an embedded carbon offset ratchet

MA (Cambridge) MSc PhD (London)

Professor Derek W Bunn is the author of over 200 research papers and 10 books in the areas of forecasting, decision analysis and energy economics. As Professor of Decision Sciences at London Business School, he has been the recipient of several professional and industry awards, including the Goodeve Medal, from the UK Operational Research Society. His work has been extensively cited, and translated into more than six languages.

Professor Bunn read Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge University; received a PhD from London Business School; and was subsequently elected CEGB Fellow in Engineering at Oxford University. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University in California.

He was an elected council member of The Institute of Management Sciences (1992-1994), representing international interests in the merger executive with ORSA to create INFORMS.

More recently he has served as council member of the British Institute of Energy Economists. He has been chief editor of the Journal of Forecasting since 1984, and was formerly chief editor of Energy Economics. He is also the founding editor of the Journal of Energy Markets and has served on the editorial boards of 11 other journals, including Management Science.

He is currently chairman of the UK Government Panel of Technical Experts for the Electricity Market and he also serves as an independent member of the industry panel that oversees the wholesale electricity trading. He has acted as a special advisor to the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, consultant to the UK Competition Commission on Electricity Market Abuse, Expert Advisor to the National Audit Office (in their review of the electricity industry reforms), peer reviewer on modelling work for DECC and Ofgem, and Expert Witness in several litigation cases before the High Court and at international Tribunals. He has been a regular keynote speaker and chair at many international research and practitioner conferences.

Akshat Rathi is a London-based senior reporter for Bloomberg News. His first book is Climate Capitalism and it tells the stories of people building solutions at scale to tackle one of humanity’s greatest challenges. He has also edited a book of essays from young climate leaders.

Akshat has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford, and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. You can sign up to his weekly Zero newsletter, subscribe to his weekly Zero podcast, and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Previously, Akshat was a senior reporter at Quartz and a science editor at The Conversation. He has also worked for The Economist and the Royal Society of Chemistry. His writings have also been published in Nature, The Hindu, The Guardian, Ars Technica, and Chemistry World, among others. And he has won numerous awards for his work:

• 2023: Whitman Bassow Award from the Overseas Press Club for the best reporting on international environmental issues, and SABEW Award for explanatory stories.
• 2022: Two-time Loeb Award finalist for the ESG Mirage and the Methane Menace, Wincott Award for Journalism of the Year and British Journalism Award commendation for investigating ESG ratings, and SABEW Award for international reporting on methane.
• 2021: British Journalism Award commendation for an investigation of ExxonMobil’s emissions.
• 2020: Distinguished Alumni Award by the Institute of Chemical Technology.
• 2018: The Drum’s Online Media Award for Journalist of the Year and John B. Oakes Award finalist for distinguished environmental journalism.

Akshat has won fellowships from Columbia University and City University of New York to enhance his reporting work. He has also served on the advisory panel of the 2019 Cairncross Review on the sustainability of high-quality journalism in the UK.

Emily McKenzie is the Technical Director at the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). She has worked for 20 years integrating nature in policy, finance, economics and decision-making. Most recently, she led the analytical team that produced the independent, global Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity, based at HM Treasury in the UK.

Emily previously was seconded to the Capitals Coalition Technical Group where she helped develop the Natural Capital Protocol. Emily worked for a decade in the WWF Global Science team, where she helped establish and lead the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University.

She also helped design the Environmental Land Management scheme in England – a major national agricultural subsidy reform programme – based at the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Other previous roles include working with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission.

PhD (Minnesota)

François Ortalo-Magné is the ninth Dean of London Business School, a position he has held since August 2017. As Chief Executive Officer of the School, he is implementing a plan to fulfil a vision of LBS as an engaged community walking the learning journey together.

With a faculty recognised for its world-class academic research and a School community rich in diversity, LBS advances careers, transforms organisations and shapes policy. Its London and Dubai campuses are at the hub of a prestigious global network inspired by their own stories of life-changing impact.

Dean Ortalo-Magné serves on the board of directors of the Graduate Management Admission Council and on the International Advisory Board of BritishAmerican Business. His research on the economics of land and housing markets has been published in leading academic journals and he has advised private, governmental and multilateral organisations around the world.

Prior to his appointment, Ortalo-Magné was the Albert O. Nicholas Dean and Robert E. Wangard Professor of Real Estate at the Wisconsin School of Business. He grew up in France in the Pyrénées and on the family farm in the Lot Valley, before training as an agricultural engineer. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota and his first academic appointment was at the London School of Economics.

BSc (Durham) MBA PhD (Western Ontario)

Julian Birkinshaw is the Vice Dean and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Strategic Management Society and the (American) Academy of Management.

He has degrees from the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada, and the University of Durham in the UK. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Stockholm School of Economics in 2009 and Copenhagen Business School in 2018.

Professor Birkinshaw is a recognised thought-leader on the impact of digital technology on the strategy and organsation of established companies. He is the author of fifteen books, including Mindtools for Managers (2018), Fast/Forward (2017), Becoming a Better Boss (2013), and Reinventing Management (2010), as well as over one hundred articles. His article How Incumbents Survive and Thrive won the Harvard Business Review best-paper award in 2022.

Professor Birkinshaw is frequently ranked as one of the “Thinkers 50” top thought leaders in the field of Management, and is quoted in international media outlets such as CNN, BBC, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal and The Times. He is a regular keynote speaker and a consultant to large companies around the world.

Professor Birkinshaw speaks on the challenges of corporate reinvention and renewal in today’s fast-changing world, focusing in particular on digital transformation, strategic agility, and the changing nature of leadership in a post-pandemic world.

Laurea (Modena) PhD (New York)

Lucrezia Reichlin is Professor of Economics at London Business School, a trustee of the Centre of European Policy Research (CEPR) and of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). As an IFRS trustee, she led the work for the establishment of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). Professor Reichlin is an applied macroeconomist and econometrician. She has pioneered methods for forecasting with large datasets and for now-casting; she wrote extensively on monetary and fiscal policy and the business cycle. For her academic accomplishments, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society and Honorary International Fellow of the American Economic Association. Professor Reichlin also has policy experience. She was Director General of Research at the European Central Bank (ECB) from 2005 to 2008 and co-founded Now-Casting Economics in 2011. She consults central banks and governments on topics related to the economic governance of the European Union, monetary policy and financial markets. In 2021, she was a member of the G20 High Level Independent Panel on financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and a panel member of the G7 Impact Taskforce. She has been a member of the French National Productivity Council since 2022. Professor Reichlin is also a member of a few commercial boards and research institutes.

BSc MSc PhD (Mannheim)

Previously a Research Assistant and PhD student at Germany’s University of Mannheim, Dr Marcel Olbert’s broad range of experience includes investment banking within the M&A advisory group of JP Morgan London, strategy consulting with Roland Berger and international tax and private equity with PwC and Flick Gocke Schaumburg. His research interests focus on the real effects of corporate taxation and disclosure regulation – examining how multinational businesses respond to incentives that stem from their regulatory and macroeconomic environment.

Marcel currently serves as an Associate Editor at the European Accounting Review. His work has been accepted for publication in The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, and the Review of Financial Studies.

Marcel’s current research on tax reforms and multinational firm investment as well as on carbon taxes and carbon leakage in developing countries is featured by the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development. For his current work on the effect of public Country-by-Country Reporting on multinational enterprises’ global resource allocation, Marcel has received a grant from The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Marcel is seeking applications for professional research assistantships.

Marcel teaches in our LBS MBA programme and has been named in the businessbecause’s list of MBA professors to watch in 2022.

SEMBA2001

MBA (London Business School) PhD (Loughborough)

Nick Hughes focuses his research on digital innovation, digital financial services and scaling innovative businesses. He is an Executive Fellow at the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, Founding Board Member with bKash – a digital financial services provider with +50m users in Bangladesh – winner of an economist award for Innovation 2010 for work on M-PESA, and has been Awarded OBE in the Queens Birthday Honours List for services to innovation in Africa.

Formerly founder of several digital businesses (M-PESA, M-KOPA and 4R Digital).

BA (Yale) MA PhD (Harvard)

As a leading expert in sustainability leadership and corporate responsibility, Professor Ioannou's research provides valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities organizations encounter when developing sustainable business models. His award-winning academic work on strategic ESG integration, coupled with his focus on the investment community and financial markets, has established him as a thought leader in the field.

Professor Ioannou actively engages with leading companies, boards, and executives, providing valuable perspectives on the implications of transitioning to sustainability leadership for both businesses and investors. As a sought-after speaker and advisor, he has delivered numerous keynote speeches globally at high-profile events and industry conferences, and his work has been featured in popular and managerial press outlets worldwide.

Deeply involved in the world of practice, Ioannis' expertise has secured him positions on various advisory boards, such as the Sustainability Advisory Panel of Merck KGaA, the ESG Advisory Board of the DWS Group, and as a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Expert Network, where he offers expert guidance on Sustainable Development.

Recognized as a leading voice in corporate sustainability, ESG, and strategy across social media platforms, Professor Ioannou has also gained recognition as a top global influencer on responsible business and sustainability matters.

PhD (Southern California)

Rajesh Chandy is Professor of Marketing and the Tony and Maureen Wheeler Chair in Entrepreneurship at London Business School, where he is also the Academic Director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development. Rajesh’s current research lies at the intersection of business and development. His recent projects have covered the impact of business skills among micro-entrepreneurs in South Africa, novel financing approaches in Ghana, property rights in slums in Egypt, innovation among farmers in India, highways and private education expenditures in India, and using big data for development outcomes.

Chandy is a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Marketing and a Co-Editor of the journal’s special issue on “Better Marketing for a Better World”. He is also co-editor of the Management Science special issue on “Business and Climate Change,” and previously served as an Area Editor for the Entrepreneurship and Innovation area at Management Science. Chandy’s research and publications have received several awards, including the Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy Research, the ISMS Gary Lilien Practice Prize for research that contributes most to the practice of marketing, the Journal of Marketing Harold Maynard Award for contributions to marketing theory and thought, the AMA TechSIG Award for the best article on Technology and Innovation (twice), the Gerald E. Hills Award for the Best Paper on Entrepreneurial Marketing, and the Albert Page Award for best professional paper on innovation. He has also received the AMA Early Career Award for contributions to marketing strategy research, and has been named an MSI Young Scholar. Fortune magazine described Chandy’s findings on innovation as "an unorthodox and bracing set of management principles."

During 2006-2008, Chandy served as a member of the US Secretary of Commerce Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy. He has provided advisory and executive education services to Carrefour, Novo Nordisk, Nordea, Rabobank, Toshiba, St. Jude Medical, 3M, Philips, Commonwealth Microfinance Limited, American Medical Systems, Deutsche Telekom, Bertelsmann, Hutchinson Technology, Microsoft, Mundipharma, Rexam, Wrigley, GfK, Futuredontics, Telenor, Vodafone, World Economic Forum, and the US and UK governments, among others. He serves as an Independent Director on the board of Laurus Labs Limited, a publicly listed pharmaceutical company.

Chandy received his PhD in 1996 from the University of Southern California. In 2018, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

Silvia Pavoni is the founder and editor of Sustainable Views, an intelligence service by the Financial Times Group providing readers with insight into how environmental, social and governance principles are reshaping capital, and into the emerging sets of policy and regulations driving this change.

Since joining the FT Group in 2005, Silvia has been on assignment to over two dozen countries, reporting with both written and filmed pieces for The Banker, for which she most recently was economics editor. She regularly interviews policymakers and business leaders at the highest level.

Silvia also serves as an advisory board member for the Women of the Future Programme and for the European Risk Management Council, and is part of the London council of not-for-profit WILL, Women in Leadership in Latin America.

JEMBA2012

Javier joined Heathrow in 2008 and has served as Chief Financial Officer since 2016. He is accountable for leading the group financially by enabling a sustainable growth strategy and transforming Heathrow’s approach to innovation, risk and investment. He leads the investment of Heathrow’s £35bln masterplan driving long-term sustainable value generation to consumers, community, and shareholders. He was closely involved in establishing the current capital structure and positioning Heathrow as a strong credit in the financial markets, including more than £10bn of fundraising since he became CFO.

Recently, Javier has successfully led Heathrow’s financial response to the COVID-19 global pandemic creating an unprecedented 97% decline in revenue by securing business continuity and accelerating Heathrow’s recovery, while enabling new technology and ways of working to transform productivity and foster growth.

Javier is a member of Heathrow Airport Holdings Board of Directors, Chair of Heathrow’s Investment Committee and Company’s Shareholder Representative at NATS Holding Limited.

Outside Heathrow, Javier co-chairs the European CFO Leadership Network of Accounting for Sustainability Project (‘A4S’) led by HRH King Charles III. He also chairs the Wellbeing Leadership Team of Business In the Community, the UK largest and longest established business-led membership organisation dedicated to responsible business. He is an executive mentor, member of The 100 Group and teaches on strategy and change management at the MBA programme of UNIR Business School (Spain).

Prior to joining Heathrow, Javier led across different roles within Ferrovial, a Spanish-based global operator of sustainable infrastructure.

Tom Grundy is the CEO of Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd (HAV), the company behind Airlander. Tom and the team HAV are changing the way we fly, rethinking the skies to provide new capabilities for ultra-efficient air services and contribute to the fight against climate change in aerospace. Tom’s technical expertise, resolve and understanding means he brings an engineering mindset to the net-zero challenge, and he is driven by a responsibility to drive change in the aerospace industry. He holds an MBA and Masters degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Advanced Systems Engineering. He is a Chartered engineer and Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Co-founder of the Gallifrey Foundation and also She Changes Climate, Antoinette is passionate about the complex interrelationships between the ocean, climate, plastics, gender, and overfishing on social injustice, human health and the environment. She seeks either coalitions to find action-oriented solutions that will have far reaching impacts downstream or to take action on identified gaps where little or no attention is being paid. Her focus is on geographic and temporal externalities as businesses scale up so they can continue to do business for good.

Thus her work is eclectic interconnectedness: ranging from the impacts of overfishing on the ocean and migrants, empowering citizens to take civil legal action against unsustainable legal and illegal overfishing, awareness campaigns on the impacts of plastics on human and planetary health, social injustice and the environment and for gender parity as well as being an International Gender champion.

MBA2010

Gaurav Mehta is the Founder and CEO of Dharma Life, a non-profit-owned social enterprise that trains and supports local women entrepreneurs to deliver solutions for rural development challenges in India. Through Dharma Life, they have reached over 45,000 villages and impacted over 13 million lives with products, services, and programs that address clean energy access, climate action, gender rights, health, digital education, and livelihoods. At Dharma Life, Gaurav also leads research, design, and innovation at DL Labs, focusing on continuous development and enhancement of their initiatives. Additionally, he manages a small family office private equity portfolio, focusing on seed-funding for early-stage enterprises.

Before founding Dharma Life, Gaurav spent nearly three years at General Atlantic, a growth capital investment firm, until 2008. He worked on opportunities in the consumer, media, and healthcare sectors across Europe. Gaurav's career began at Morgan Stanley in London, specializing in European capital products and healthcare investment banking.

While at Morgan Stanley, he became the Founder/President of the German Chapter at Pratham, an organization working towards providing education to underprivileged children in India, based in Dusseldorf, Germany. In his role as Chapter Lead, he raised awareness and funding support through various large-scale business conferences and events.

Gaurav has been recognized as a Young Global Leader, Class of 2018 by the World Economic Forum, and received the BMW Foundation Young Leaders Award in 2013 at the Munich Economic Summit. In addition, Gaurav was honored with the London Business School MBA Graduate of the Last Decade Award in 2020.

Gaurav graduated with a BA degree with honors in International Business Studies and French from the European Business School, London. He later pursued his MBA degree from London Business School.

Richard has been a ‘Handelsbanker’ since 2011, initially charged with introducing the Swedish bank's distinctive values-led model to a broadening audience of UK stakeholders. During several years as global head of external affairs in Stockholm, he became increasingly involved in sustainability issues, from the climate and nature crises to social equity and the corporate purpose movement.

Today as Head of Sustainability, Richard is responsible for developing and embedding Handelsbanken's Sustainability strategy across its 3,000-strong British operations. This strategy seeks to build on the bank’s strong local relationships, Nordic experience, and long roots as a responsible bank.

Albert Cheung serves as Deputy CEO of BloombergNEF (BNEF), a leading provider of primary research on commodities and the low-carbon transition. He also oversees BNEF’s research on the global low-carbon transition, including clean energy, transport, industry, technology, agriculture and sustainable finance, providing strategic oversight and managing the development and delivery of BNEF’s global research agenda. Albert and his team work closely with corporates, financial institutions and policymakers across the globe, supporting them as they navigate the transition towards a cleaner future.

Albert joined BNEF in 2009 and has previously held a number of leadership positions in the firm, including Head of Product and Head of Energy Smart Technologies. Albert holds a MEng in Electrical and Information Engineering from the University of Cambridge.

BloombergNEF

BloombergNEF (BNEF) is a strategic research provider covering global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. Our expert coverage assesses pathways for the power, transport, industry, buildings and agriculture sectors to adapt to the energy transition. We help commodity trading, corporate strategy, finance and policy professionals navigate change and generate opportunities.

BSc MSc PhD (Mannheim)

Previously a Research Assistant and PhD student at Germany’s University of Mannheim, Dr Marcel Olbert’s broad range of experience includes investment banking within the M&A advisory group of JP Morgan London, strategy consulting with Roland Berger and international tax and private equity with PwC and Flick Gocke Schaumburg. His research interests focus on the real effects of corporate taxation and disclosure regulation – examining how multinational businesses respond to incentives that stem from their regulatory and macroeconomic environment.

Marcel currently serves as an Associate Editor at the European Accounting Review. His work has been accepted for publication in The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, and the Review of Financial Studies.

Marcel’s current research on tax reforms and multinational firm investment as well as on carbon taxes and carbon leakage in developing countries is featured by the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development. For his current work on the effect of public Country-by-Country Reporting on multinational enterprises’ global resource allocation, Marcel has received a grant from The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Marcel is seeking applications for professional research assistantships.

Marcel teaches in our LBS MBA programme and has been named in the businessbecause’s list of MBA professors to watch in 2022.

MBA2008

Martha has more than 20 years in oil & gas upstream, including 10 years at slb, and at BCG she leads the topics of upstream assets decarbonization and decommissioning.

Matthieu Hue has more than 20 years’ experience within the EDF Group, in the energy sector and particularly in renewable energy.

Matthieu joined EDF in the year 2000. He worked on the formation of EDF Renewables (EDF R) and joined the company when established in 2008. Actively involved in the successful expansion of EDF R, Matthieu is now leading a team of more than 400 people who are involved in every stage of delivering renewables projects from development and construction to asset management.

Matthieu is responsible for 42 operational sites - 36 wind farms including 2 offshore wind farms at Blyth and Teesside, 3 solar sites and 3 battery storage projects across the UK and Ireland totalling more than 1GW.

The company has a development of pipeline of projects comprising more than 14GW across Wales, England, Scotland and Ireland.

Matthieu has a master in economics from the University of Paris and an MBA from Columbia and London Business School.

Welcome from the Dean, François Ortalo-Magné

François Ortalo-Magné

Dean

Introduction from the Vice Dean, Julian Birkinshaw

Julian Birkinshaw

Vice-Dean; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Spotlight on: COP28 Expectations and the Role of Business, Associate Professor Ioannis Ioannou

Professor Ioannou will analyse the interlinkages between COP28 and business strategies, emphasising the opportunity for the business sector to drive climate-resilient growth and champion sustainable innovation. He will also discuss the impact of regulatory alignment on enhancing business contributions to climate action, and how this alignment facilitates a more sustainable global economy.

Ioannis Ioannou

Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Panel session: Energy Transition

Significant challenges facing the global business community — energy security, macroeconomic impacts, and the myriad of complex industrial challenges — will play an important part in how the energy systems transformation unfolds.

Hear from leading alumni and other business practitioners on the outlook for how energy - systems, markets and technologies - will evolve, and learn of the innovative approaches that are being developed to accelerate the move away from fossil fuel.

Albert Cheung

Bloomberg NEF’s Deputy CEO, Head of Global Transition Analysis

Daniel Hanna

Global Head of Sustainable Finance, Barclays

Martha Vasquez

Partner & Associate Director, Upstream Oil & Gas at BCG - Decarbonization, Energy Transition, Decommissioning, Performance Improvement

Fireside chat: Energy Transition, A View from the UAE with Vice Dean, Julian Birkinshaw and Alex Haynes, Head of Business Development at Petrofac

Julian Birkinshaw

Vice-Dean; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Spotlight on: Complex Climate Trade-Offs, Professor Alex Edmans

It is frequently claimed that “climate risk is investment risk”, so decarbonising your portfolio will also increase its returns. But does the data actually show this, or can companies get away with polluting given limited government action? And even if investors only care about environmental impact, is divestment the best way to achieve it?

Alex Edman

Professor of Finance

Panel session: Meeting the Climate Challenge

LBS alumni and senior leaders from the wider business community share their expectations of COP28 and discuss how they are meeting the climate challenge in their businesses, including the reality of managing decision making and trade-offs.

Matthieu Hue

Chief Executive Officer, EDF Renewables UK and Ireland

Tom Grundy

CEO Hybrid Air Vehicles

Richard Winder

Head of Sustainability, Handlesbanken

Panel session: How Regulation is Supporting the Path to Net Zero, moderated by Silvia Pavoni, Founder and Editor of Sustainable Views, Financial Times

Regulation has a key role to play in containing climate change. But how can climate disclosures move from recommendation to adoption and become meaningful global norms? And what is the role of carbon taxation? Our panel will focus on the opportunities and challenges for regulation to support the path to net zero, including the perspective of a company’s direct response.

Emily McKenzie

Technical Director, Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures

Javier Echave

CFO, Heathrow Airport Holdings

Lucrezia Reichlin

Professor of Economics

Marcel Olbert

Assistant Professor of Accounting

Panel session: Climate Transition and Emerging Markets, led by the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development, moderated by Rajesh Chandy, Professor of Marketing; Tony and Maureen Wheeler Chair in Entrepreneurship

The panel will delve into pressing climate challenges, the disproportionate effects on vulnerable communities in developing nations and how organisations can transition their operations and business models to tackle climate change. The session will also address COP28 and its significance in addressing the specific challenges faced by emerging markets.

Antoinette Vermilye

Co-Founder, Gallifrey Foundation

Gaurav Mehta

Founder & CEO Dharma Life

Nick Hughes

Executive Fellow LBS

Fireside chat: Hosted by Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell

CEO, United Renewables; CEO, Causeway Energy

Dr Akshat Rathi

Senior Reporter, Bloomberg News