FT CFO Dialogues

Description

Speakers

Brooke Masters

Brooke Masters was appointed Comment and Analysis Editor for the Financial Times in 2018. Previously she was an Assistant Editor, Companies Editor and Chief Regulation Correspondent. In the latter role she covered the UK Financial Services Authority and worked with reporters around the world to cover global financial regulation and white- collar crime cases. Prior to this, she was the City Correspondent covering banking, stockbroking and asset management with a secondary focus on London’s international competitiveness. Before that she wrote for the Lex column and served as a senior business reporter in the FT's New York office covering the intersection of law and business.

From 2002 to 2006, Ms Masters reported on Wall Street and white-collar crime for the Washington Post and followed New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's various investigations. This led to her 2006 book, Spoiling for a Fight: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer, which was published in both hardback and paperback editions by Henry Holt. Ms Masters spent an additional 13 years at the Washington Post in Washington and Virginia, covering criminal justice, education, and politics. She has also written extensively about espionage, capital punishment and terrorism. Ms Masters graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in History. She also earned a Master's of Science in Economic History with distinction from the London School of Economics.

John Gapper

John Gapper is Chief Business Commentator and Associate Editor of the Financial Times. He writes an award-winning column on business, with a focus on finance, media and technology, and also contributes editorials and features, including regular Lunch with the FT interviews. Mr Gapper is one of the FT’s most senior and influential writers, having covered the financial and media industries, as well as employment issues, before taking up his current role in 2003. Between 2005 and 2012, he was based in the FT’s New York office, where he helped to lead its successful expansion in the US. He is the author of a novel, A Fatal Debt, a financial thriller published by Random House (2013), and co-author with Nick Denton of All That Glitters, and is working on a second. The winner of the 2013 Gerald Loeb award for commentary, he has received three annual Best in Business citations for his column from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. In the UK, he was named best business columnist in the 2011 Comment Awards and gained the technology writer and best communicator awards in the Business Journalist of the Year awards. Mr Gapper won an open scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford University and was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Before joining the FT in 1987, he trained as a journalist with Mirror Group Newspapers, working on papers including the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

Martin Wolf CBE

Martin Wolf is Chief Economics Commentator and an Associate Editor at the Financial Times. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”. He was a member of the UK government’s Independent Commission on Banking between June 2010 and September 2011. His book The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned—and Have Still to Learn—from the Financial Crisis was published by Penguin in 2014.

Mr Wolf is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University and King’s College, London. In 2014, he was made a University Global Fellow of Columbia University, New York and a Senior Fellow in Global Economic Policy at its School of International Public Affairs. He is a member of the International Media Council of the World Economic Forum.

Mr Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism for 1989 and again for 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize for 1994 and the “Commentator of the Year” award at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2008. He was placed 15th in Foreign Policy’s list of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers” in December 2009 and the “Ludwig Erhard Prize for economic commentary” for 2009. He won “Commentariat of the Year 2009” at the Comment Awards, the 33rd Ischia International Journalism Prize in 2012 and the Overseas Press Club of America’s prize for “best commentary on international news in any medium” for 2013.

Mr Wolf is also the author of Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, 2004) and Fixing Global Finance (Washington D.C: Johns Hopkins University Press, and London: Yale University Press, 2008 and 2010). China Business News named Fixing Global Finance its “Financial Book of the Year” for 2009.

Mr Wolf was educated at Oxford University.

Alistair Brownlee MBE

Alistair Brownlee MBE is the two time Olympic Triathlon Champion. He was also runner up at 2016 Sports Personality of the Year.

Jonny Brownlee is the younger of the Brownlee brothers, and has won Silver (Rio) and Bronze (London) Olympic medals.

Mary Starks

Mary Starks is the Chief Economist at the Financial Conduct Authority. She is also Director of Competition and Economics, sharing the job with Deb Jones.
Together they run the Competition and Economics division at FCA, now 130-strong, with a wide-ranging programme of competition casework underway.
Previously Ms Starks was a Senior Director at the Office of Fair Trading, where she had worked since 2008. She was responsible for the OFT’s financial services work and its change programme.
She is an economist by background, and has previously worked at the New Zealand Commerce Commission, NERA Economic Consulting and the Bank of England.

Michel Checoury

Chief Financial Officer of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Michel Checoury, is an accomplished finance professional with more than 30 years’ global experience. He is responsible for aligning strategic planning processes, the ongoing implementation of Mövenpick’s successful business model and supporting all finance-related decisions and functions.

Mr Checoury has spent his entire career working in senior financial positions for hospitality brands across the world including Mandarin Oriental, InterContinental Hotels Group, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the Jumeirah Group, as well as Disneyland Paris. Prior to joining Mövenpick in 2017, he spent three years as CFO of Aman Resorts, with responsibility for the finance function of the firm’s entire portfolio of 31 properties across 19 countries. Prior to joining Aman, he worked for the Jumeirah Group as Resort Director of Finance until 2008, before moving to Mandarin Oriental as Regional Director of Finance EMEA. Mr Checoury has an MBA in Finance from Paris XII University.

Simone Menne

Simone Menne holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Kiel, Germany and began her career as an auditor for ITT Corporation in the United States, later joining Deutsche Lufthansa. At Lufthansa Technik, she served as Vice President of Finance and Accounting, before joining British Midland as Chief Financial Officer in 2010. In 2012, Ms. Menne joined Lufthansa as a member of the management board and was appointed Chief Financial Officer. She served as Chief Financial Officer at Boehringer Ingelheim from 2016 to 2017. Ms. Menne is a member of the supervisory board of BMW, Deutsche Post,
Johnson Controls International and Springer Nature. She also serves in the audit committee of the latter three.

Wendy Smith

Wendy Smith is the Chief Financial Officer for Kellogg's EMEA Region. She was appointed to this post in September 2015. Prior to joining Kellogg's, Ms Smith held senior finance positions in Johnson & Johnson and P&G. Most recently she was the Chief Financial Officer for J&J's Consumer Division in the Asia Pacific Region. To date, she has held a range of senior positions in finance functions globally and in different regions across the world. She has industry experiences in Consumer Products, Medical Devices, and Pharmaceuticals.

As a finance professional, Ms Smith believes in the importance of Compliance, Business Partnering and People Development. Her primary focus and passion is in developing people, and being an active mentor and sponsor for many professionals in and outside of her company.

Michael Landau

Michael Landau is the Group Chief Financial Officer at Lyca Group and is responsible for supervising the financial affairs and strategy of all Lyca Group companies. He leads a 70-person international finance team, which includes financial management and reporting, group structuring, tax and treasury, corporate finance, and the management of all external financial relations. Mr Landau has extensive experience in the TMT sector finance and as an entrepreneur, with Board experience across both private and public companies.

Elina Ribakova

Managing Director and Chief Economist EEMEA
Deutsche Bank

Sandra Federighi

Sandra Federighi Oni has been the Global Chief Financial Officer at Stella McCartney for the past four years. She started her career in fashion by joining Gucci in Florence. Her background in banking gave her a strong foundation from which she progressed through to a Financial Controller position within the Kering group at Stella McCartney.

Additionally, Mrs Federighi Oni has been so inspired by winning the Black British Awards as leader in the consumer and luxury category, that she started the process of setting up a foundation to support Young Black and Minority Ethnic Talent to enter, develop and grow in the fashion industry. This would be an extension of a role she has already adopted of mentoring young people looking to build a great career and develop themselves in the fashion business.

James Lenton

James Lenton is the Chief Financial Officer for AIG Europe. Prior to joining AIG in 2013, Mr. Lenton was with Ernst and Young LLP where he was coordinating partner for the global insurance assurance practice. Whilst there, he advised and audited a number of the largest publicly listed and private equity backed insurers. Prior to this, Mr. Lenton started his career at Price Waterhouse (latterly PwC) in 1996 where he worked in the UK and the USA.

Caroline Clarke

Caroline Clarke has been the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust's Chief Finance Officer since 2011 and in 2012 she was awarded the Finance Director of the year by the Healthcare Financial Management Association. She was also appointed as the Trust’s Deputy Chief Executive in 2012.

Ms Clarke was formerly director of strategy at NHS North Central London. Prior to that she was an associate partner in KPMG's health strategy team. She has spent most of her career in NHS finance, having been director of finance at the Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and City and Hackney Primary Care Trust.

Angela Noon

Chief Financial Officer
Siemens UK

Ankush Nandra

Ankush Nandra is the Vice President Finance and Chief Financial Officer Europe at AstraZeneca where he leads the commercial finance organisation across the
European Region. He is a member of both the European Leadership Team and Global Finance Leadership Team.

Before joining AZ, he spent 16 years at GSK based in the UK, US and Australia for a variety of roles including: CFO for the Australia and New Zealand business, CFO for Global and leadership of the Corporate Development group - working closely with the Group CEO and CFO on several M&A projects. Prior to this, he spent time in M&A with HSBC Investment Bank following qualification as an ACA with KPMG in London.

Kjerstin Braathen

Kjerstin R. Braathen is Group Executive Vice President of Group Finance at DNB Bank ASA and since March 2017 serves as Chief Financial Officer. She joined DNB in 1999.

She is the former Group executive vice president of Corporate Banking Norway, and has many years’ experience from Shipping, Offshore and Logistics (SOL) in Oslo. She has held previous roles at Hydro Agri International.

Ms Braathen holds a Masters in Management degree from Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Nice-Sophia Antipolis.

Julia Wilson

Julia Wilson is Group Finance Director of 3i Group plc having been appointed to the Board in 2008. She is a member of the Executive and Investment Committees.

Ms Wilson is also the Senior Independent Director of Legal & General Group plc, and a member of the ICAEW (ACA) and the Chartered Institute of Taxation. She began her career at Arthur Andersen, and held a variety of tax and financial roles at Hanson plc, Tomkins plc and Cable & Wireless plc before joining 3i in 2006.

Alan Dingwall

Alan Dingwall is the CFO of Serco UK & Europe and directs the financial and commercial function of this diversified outsourcing business. During the last 7 years with Serco, he has performed a number of Finance Director roles and worked for 2 years in M&A. Prior to Serco, he worked in Finance roles with Facilities Management and Telecoms organisations and has had the full range of experiences from acquiring, being acquired, growing quickly and contracting. The last year at Serco has been focussed on transforming the finance function to improve controls, reduce costs and release capacity to ensure value is added to the operations. To achieve this they will be leveraging technology, within which the spectrum and pace of change impacting all aspects of life and business is a fascination which is both exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Turid Elisabeth Solvang

Turid Elisabeth Solvang is Founder and CEO of Future Boards, a Norwegian-based project development company seeking to drive the evolution of corporate governance. It facilitates the exchange of experience and ideas for best practice governance and enables physical and digital networking. She is Co-Founder of the Norwegian Institute of Directors, which she helped establish in 2009, and was the Managing Director until October 2016. She was Chairperson of the European Confederation of Directors Associations and Co-Founder and Co-Vice Chair of European Women on Boards until April 2017. Ms Solvang is a member of the editorial advisory board of the UK-based magazine Board Agenda. She is frequently speaks on corporate governance issues, including women on boards, and is an experienced board member.

Alexandra Morris

Alexandra Morris has been Investment Director at SKAGEN Funds since September 2016 and leads a 24 person strong investment team. Within this role, she has ultimate responsibility for all SKAGEN’s fund teams' investment decisions and results. SKAGEN Funds is a Scandinavian management company with a long history in managing equity and fixed income funds. The company was established in 1993 and is based in Norway.
Ms Morris has over 20 years’ experience within the investment industry from all sides of the investment table – as portfolio manager, broker, investor relations director as well as investment director. She previously worked at DNB Asset Management where she was CIO. From 2004 -2015, she was senior portfolio manager of two of Odin’s European mutual funds.
She has served on several boards, including Nordic Nanovector, a listed biotech company and as chairman of the nomination committee of Kongsberg Gruppen, a large defence company.

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