Edward Chancellor is the author of Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (Farrar Straus/Macmillan, 1999), a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In 2005, he published Crunch-Time for Credit?(Harriman House), an analysis of the ongoing credit boom in the US and UK.  Edward has also edited two well-received investment books, Capital Account (Thomson Texere, 2004) and Capital Returns (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). His latest book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest (Allen Lane, 2022) is the recipient of the 2023 Hayek Prize.

Edward read history at Cambridge and Oxford. Until 2014 he was a senior member of the  asset allocation team at GMO, the Boston investment firm. He is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews, the financial commentary site, and has contributed to many publications, including  the Wall Street Journal, MoneyWeek, the New York Review of Books and Financial Times. In 2008, Edward received the George Polk Award for financial reporting for his article “Ponzi Nation” in Institutional Investor magazine.

Merryn Somerset Webb was founding editor of Moneyweek magazine in 2000. She remained at the magazine as Editor in Chief until late 2022. Merryn was also a Contributing Editor to and weekly columnist for the Financial Times until September 2022. She is currently a Senior Columnist at Bloomberg writing about wealth, investing and personal finance and hosts the 'Merryn Talks Money' podcast. Merryn is also an experienced non executive director and currently sits on the board of two listed investment trusts. 

Oliver Bullough is an award-winning author and journalist from Hay, who writes about financial crime, kleptocracy and money laundering, often with a connection to the former Soviet republics. His most recent book 'Butler to the World' was called "razor-sharp" by the FT; while 'Moneyland' was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, and won the Welsh non-fiction book of the year prize. His journalism appears in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Sunday Times, in various magazines, and on the BBC.

Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University. Her most recent book Disorder: Hard Times in the 21stCentury was published by Oxford University Press on 24 February 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 Financial Times Business Book of the Year. She has written for, among other outlets, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Sunday Times,  the Guardian, Foreign Affairs, Project Syndicate, the London Review of Books, New Statesman, UnHerd, Nature, and Prospect. She co-presents the politics podcast These Times. 

Russell Napier is author of The Solid Ground investment report for institutional investors and co-founder of the investment research portal ERIC- a business he now co-owns with D.C. Thomson.  Russell has worked in the investment business for 35 years and has been advising global institutional investors on asset allocation since 1995. Russell is author of the book Anatomy of The Bear: Lessons From Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms ( in print for almost twenty years and ‘a cult classic’ according to the FT) and is founder and course director of The Practical History of Financial Markets course. The course has run since 2004 and is now available on campus at Edinburgh Business School, in a two and a half day in-person executive version in London and also online. 

He is a member of the investment advisory committees of three fund management companies, Cerno Capital, Kennox Asset Management and Bay Capital. He is part owner of both Cerno and Kennox. 

In 2014 Russell founded the charitable venture The Library of Mistakes a business and financial history library in Edinburgh that now has branches in India and Switzerland. Plans to open libraries in London, Singapore, Toronto and Mumbai are progressing. The Library of Mistakes hosts lectures which are live streamed and recorded and a podcast series was launched in 2022. The Library and the course are owned and operated by a Scottish registered charity called Didasko which donates its financial surpluses to promote financial education.  

Russell has degrees in law from Queen’s University Belfast and Magdalene College Cambridge. He is a Fellow of The CFA Society of the UK , an Honorary Fellow of the CISI and is an Honorary Professor at The University of Stirling and a Visiting Professor at Heriot Watt University. His second book – The Asian Financial Crisis 1995-1998: Birth of the Age of Debt- was published in July 2021. 

Alice Sherwood is the Co-Director of the Weekend of Mistakes. She is the author of the award-winning Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture (HarperCollins 2022), which argues that although our counterfeit culture is shaped by the most powerful forces of economics, evolution, and technology, we can still come together to reclaim reality. Currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at The Policy Institute at King’s College London, she has been a director of an open-source intelligence company, worked as a management consultant for Accenture, in retail strategy consultancy and private equity, and for the BBC in education and multimedia. She has under-graduate degrees in philosophy and in chemistry, an MBA from INSEAD, and an MA in literary criticism and narrative non-fiction. She is a trustee of the Hay Castle Trust, chair of the Beit Scientific Fellowship at Imperial Colleget, chair of the Rising Tide women’s network, and lives in London and Wales. Authenticity is Alice’s first book. It won a Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction.

Bruce Jenkyn-Jones, Co-Chief Investment Officer, Impax Asset Management Impax Asset Management is UK-listed firm that specialises in investing in the transition to a more sustainable economy. As one of Impax’s longest-serving employees, Bruce developed the firm’s listed equities business and the division’s investment thesis. He is responsible for overseeing and enhancing all aspects of the listed investments business, including monitoring  performance, ensuring regulatory compliance, and spearheading product design. Bruce is a co-Portfolio Manager of the Impax Specialists strategy and of Impax Environmental Markets plc. Before joining Impax in 1999, Bruce worked as a utilities analyst at Bankers Trust and as an environmental consultant for Environmental Resources Management. An Oxford graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Bruce also holds a master’s in Environmental Engineering Technology, and an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona. 

Visiting Fellow, Newcastle University Business School. Formerly Senior Partner, BDO Chartered Accountants and President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

David McWilliams strives to demystify economics and make the topic accessible to
audiences worldwide. Economist, author, podcaster, journalist, he founded the world’s only
economics and stand-up comedy festival “Kilkenomics”— described by the Financial Times
as “simply, the best economics conference in the world”. He writes a weekly column for the
Irish Times and hosts The David McWilliams Podcast, which aims to make economics
uncomplicated. Adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin, in a previous life, David had a
few “real jobs”, working as an economist at the Irish Central Bank, UBS and Banque
Nationale de Paris. In his new book Money: A Story of Humanity, McWilliams charts the
relationship between humans and money – from a tally stick in ancient Africa to coins in
Republican Greece, from mathematics in the mediaeval Arab world to the French
Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today’s cryptocurrency and
beyond. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money,
disrupting society and changing the way we live, in an ongoing monetary evolution that
has, for the last 5000 years, animated human progress.

Dr Samuel Hughes is an editor at Works in Progress, where he works on urbanism, architecture and public policy. He has previously worked as an advisor to Michael Gove in the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government, as Head of Housing at the Centre for Policy Studies, and as a research fellow at the University of Oxford. He co-authored the widely read essay Foundations: Why Britain has stagnated.

Dr Felix Martin (www.felixmartin.org) is an economist, investor, and highly acclaimed author.

His twenty-five year career in international finance has ranged from sovereign lending and post-conflict reconstruction at the World Bank to designing, launching, and managing a sequence of global investment funds at publicly-listed asset managers, leading private firms, and his own independent boutique. Today, he advises global investors, governments, and corporate leaders on how to navigate complex financial and political risks using an approach that makes economics engaging and digestible.

Felix’s 2013 book Money: the Unauthorised Biography has been published in fifteen countries and ten languages, was a Financial Times Economics Book of the Year, and was called “compulsively readable” by the New York Times. It must also (surely...) be the only book to have been both cited by the US Supreme Court and endorsed by the lead singer of glam rock legends Kiss. He is a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews.

Ed Richards is a co-founder of Flint Global Ltd. Flint works with companies and other organisationswho seek to navigate successful developments in the policy, political and regulatory arenas. The company works globally from six offices across Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Ed works across a broad range of sectors including digital/tech and other network industries, as well as on general policy, competition, and regulatory issues.

Before co-founding Flint, Ed spent more than eight years as the Chief Executive of Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator. Earlier in his career Ed worked as an adviser to the UK Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street covering a wide range of domestic policy areas and helping to coordinate the introduction of significant legislation. Prior to this, he led the Corporate Strategy team at the BBC during the development of digital technology and services.

In addition to his position as Founding Partner at Flint, Ed is also Chair of Nesta, the social innovation charity and Chair of the Behavioural Insights Team (the Nudge Unit).

Emma Slade was educated at Cambridge University and London University and attained the CFA qualification as a Chartered Financial Analyst. She had a very successful career as a Senior Financial Analyst for HSBC, largely based in Hong Kong from 1994-1999 and, later, in private equity and hedge fund analysis.

As an investment analysis she assisted on investing $1bn in Asian securities. Then, in the turmoil of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, on a business trip to Jakarta, she was held in her hotel room by an armed gunman. This event proved a turning point in her life and kick started her on a quest to think what she really wished to do with her life and contribute to the world.  

Already a Buddhist and an experienced yoga teacher it was on her first trip to Bhutan in 2011 that she met Lama Nima Tshering who became her teacher and who, a year later, instructed her to follow a path of renunciation and compassion and become a nun. 

In 2022 she became the first and only Western woman ever to be fully ordained in the Himalayas itself when a historic event occurred in Bhutan when 142 nuns were given full ordination on a level equivalent to monks. 

In 2015 she set up the UK charity - Opening Your Heart to Bhutan - to help special needs children in Bhutan. The charity has raised £800,000 and played a major role in building the first purpose-built special needs school in Bhutan. 

With her in-depth understanding of the country of Bhutan and its contribution to writings on happiness and her personal story of transformation she is often featured in international events. She donates such engagements to her charity. 

George Littlejohn qualified as a chartered accountant with PwC in London before becoming a journalist with The Economist, specialising in financial and economic matters. He is now Senior Adviser at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), having conducted advisory work in financial centres across Europe, the Middle East and Asia over the past two decades. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, and the author of a number of works on risk management in finance.

Izabella Kaminska is the founder and editor of The Blind Spot, a new media venture that aims to shine a light on stories being missed by the wider journalistic pack. The site focuses on finance, market, and media news in both short and long form. It hopes to deliver a healthy mix of analysis and opinion-led commentary, supported by aggregation, news reporting and deep dives.

In February 2023, she also became Politico Europe’s senior finance editor, overseeing the growth of Politico’s financial coverage on a part-time basis, in a deal that secured a special licensing agreement for the distribution of Politico content on The Blind Spot. She continues to author her weekly newsletter at The Blind Spot.

Izabella is an alumnus of the Financial Times, where she spent 13 years in reporting roles, most recently as the editor of FT Alphaville, the Financial Times’s award-winning markets and finance blog. Izabella was also an FT columnist and opinion writer focused on tech, finance, and markets. She has also written as a freelancer for Bloomberg, Boat International, and Public News.

Izabella started her journalistic career in 2001 as a junior reporter for the English-language newspaper the Warsaw Business Journal. She later spent time in the former Soviet Union at the Caspian Business News, which took her to Azerbaijan and Georgia. In 2003 she reported as a freelancer from Kabul, Afghanistan, before joining BP as an Associate Editor of the company’s internal magazine Horizon in 2004.

After completing the 2005 Reuters graduate trainee program, Izabella joined Platts to focus on the reporting of European natural gas markets. She then went on to become a senior producer at CNBC in London, producing the channel’s flagship program Squawk Box. 

With The Blind Spot Izabella is initiating a two-part plan to try to reconfigure how journalistic information is organized on the Internet. 

James was appointed President and Chief Executive of NMITE in September 2022. NMITE is a new Higher Education institution launched in 2021 to deliver a completely new model of degree level education.

James gained his Higher Education later in life earning two degrees with the Open University. He now champions the role of Higher Education as a driving force for social mobility, up-skilling, regional regeneration and for creating new opportunities. He also advocates for new providers, and new models, in Higher Education as a driver of innovation. He now writes and speaks regularly on the need for reform in HE.

Prior to joining the Higher Education industry, James worked in the private sector and as an entrepreneur.

Jesse Norman is the MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire, and an academic and writer. He is also a founder and now the Chair of NMITE, Herefordshire's new specialist technical university.

Among his ministerial roles, Jesse has served as Paymaster General and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, where he managed the Furlough Scheme during the pandemic. He is now Shadow Leader of the House of Commons. Otherwise, he is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and the author of works on Edmund Burke and Adam Smith, and a historical novel, The Winding Stair. 

Gus O'Donnell served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the British Civil Service from 2005 to 2011, during which he oversaw the formation of the first coalition government since World War II. Prior to this, he was Permanent Secretary to the Treasury (2002–2005) and represented the UK on the IMF and World Bank Boards. Recently stepping down as Chair of Frontier Economics after 11 years, Gus continues to support the consulting firm in an Ambassadorial role. He also holds several other positions, including Strategic Advisor and Board Member for Brookfield Asset Management, President of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), and Honorary President of Pro Bono Economics (PBE). Additionally, he is a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) and University College London (UCL), as well as a member of the Economist Trust. Gus studied Economics at Warwick University and Nuffield College, Oxford, before beginning his academic career as a lecturer at Glasgow University. Knighted in 2005, he was appointed to the House of Lords in 2012, where he sits as a crossbencher. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

Lord Terence Burns, often known as Terry Burns, is a British economist, made a life peer in 1998 following a civil service career as Chief Economic Advisor and Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury. He served as Chairman of Ofcom and was also a non-executive member of the Office for Budget Responsibility. He was Chairman of Santander UK, Welsh Water, Marks and Spencer and Channel 4 Corporation. He is a former President of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and of the Society of Business Economists. He was Chairman of the Governing Body of the Royal Academy of Music and is currently Chairman of YCAT (Young Classical Artists Trust).

Nick Butler is an energy economist and Visiting Professor in the Policy Institute at Kings College London.  He was Group Vice President for Strategy and Policy at BP from 2002 to 2007 and subsequent senior policy adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.   

Paul Greatbatch was a Partner & Portfolio Manager at Genesis Investment Management from 1994-2013, one the oldest specialist managers operating in Emerging Markets on behalf of large institutional clients

Anja Shortland is a Professor in Political Economy at King’s College London. She studied Engineering Science at Oxford and for her MSc in Political Economy and PhD in International Relations at LSE. Anja specialises in institutional economics and the economics of crime. She is fascinated by private ordering in the world’s trickiest markets: hostages, hijacked ships, stolen art, looted antiquities and ransomware. Her research focuses on trades between legal and illegal enterprises and insurance as governance in criminal markets.

Anja’s Books include Lost Art: The Art Loss Register's Case Book Vol 1. Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business

Professor Christel Koop

Christel is a professor of political economy at King’s College London and a leading expert in economic regulation. She was educated in the Netherlands and Italy, and has done extensive research on the independence, accountability, and legitimacy of economic regulators and other technocratic bodies, in the UK and elsewhere. In recent years, her work has focused on the re-politicisation of independent economic regulators – and politically insulated expert bodies more generally – and the organisational responses this has triggered. She also has a keen interest in citizen engagement by regulators.

Rachel Jenkins OBE is  a psychiatrist, epidemiologist and mental health policy maker. She is Emeritus  Professor of Epidemiology and International Mental Health Policy at Kings College London  and  formerly  Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre (1997-2012). She trained in Medicine at Girton College, Cambridge, and then in Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and epidemiological research at the Institute of Psychiatry before becoming Consultant Psychiatrist and Senior Lecturer, first at the Maudsley Hospital and Institute of Psychiatry and then  at St Bartholomew’s Hospital  . She was then recruited into the Senior Civil Service as Principal Medial Officer for mental health policy 1987-1996.   She has provided policy support, research   and training in the UK, Africa, the Middle East and Asia .

She initiated  the national  mental health  survey programme  in the UK in 1992, which  has provided much useful information both about the prevalence, causes and consequences of mental disorders, including the relationship with income and debt, and about  the dimensions of happiness and wellbeing.  She led the mental health component of the Chief Scientist’s Foresight report of Mental Capital and Wellbeing 2008. 

She returned to live in her native Herefordshire in 2011, and is active in local biodiversity projects . She produced the exhibition about the River Wye, now on display in Hay Church.

Professor the Baroness Alison Wolf DBE is the Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London. She sits as a cross-bench peer (Baroness Wolf of Dulwich) in the UK House of Lords. She specialises in the relationship between education and the labour market. She was the founding Chair of Governors of King’s College London Mathematics School, and remains a governor and vice-chair, and she is a trustee of the University Maths Schools Network.

Alison Wolf served in the No 10 Policy Unit, as a part-time expert adviser on skills and workforce to the UK Prime Minister, from February 2020 to February 2023. She was a panel member for the ‘Augar Review’: the independent Review of Post-18 Education and Funding chaired by Sir Philip Augar, which reported in 2019. In March 2011 she completed the Wolf Report which led to major reforms in vocational education for 14-18 year olds, and she was also a member of the Sainsbury Review which led to the creation of T-levels. Publications include The XX Factor and Does Education Matter?

Rufus has 19 years of experience investing in Emerging Markets. He is a Founding Partner and PM at Variis Partners LLP. Variis is a majority female-owned investment boutique based in London managing a single, high-conviction, Global Emerging Markets long-only equity strategy. He previously a Partner and PM at Genesis Investment Management (2013-2023). Additionally, at Genesis, Rufus led the Genesis investment team in covering China. Prior to Genesis, he was a PM at Fidelity International. Rufus grew up in the US and China and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Rufus attended Pomona College in California as an undergraduate and completed a Certificate program at Johns Hopkins SAIS program in Nanjing, China. He has his MBA from Columbia Business School.

Siobhan is Head of ESG and joined Baillie Gifford in 2022. Her extensive career includes pivotal work with stock exchanges to enhance corporate ESG disclosure and promote broader sustainability practices. She has also worked with NGOs, UN bodies, investors, and listed companies, on topics such as biodiversity, gender equality, human rights, and climate change. Siobhan holds an MSc in Climate Change from King’s College London, an MBA from the University of Cape Town, and an MA in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Sir Martin Donnelly is a former Permanent Secretary with expertise in business, trade and global economic issues, and four decades of  experience shaping policy across Government and the private sector, in the UK and globally. He has worked in Brussels and Paris as well as London, and has written widely on international trade and economic issues, gender diversity and leadership. Martin has just completed a report on Economic Diplomacy commissioned by the Foreign Secretary David Lammy. He lives in Bwlch, Powys.

Sir Philip Augar is an author and former investment banker. A PhD in History, he has been speaking, writing and broadcasting about the challenges of modern capitalism and banking for twenty five years. He has written seven books, contributes to the Financial Times,  Sunday Times and the BBC. Philip has held a number of advisory and non-executive roles in the public and private sectors and chaired the panel reviewing post-18 education for the UK government in 2018-19. He was knighted in 2021. 

Tamim Bayoumi is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London working on macroeconomics and international finance. After graduating from Cambridge and Stanford Universities, he had a long and varied career at the IMF, including overseeing work on the World Economic Outlook and the United States. He is also head of author of an FT economics book of the year on the origins of the 2009 North Atlantic financial crisis, Unfinished Business.

Theodora Zemek has had a 40 year career in the City, largely in fixed income investment. She has managed portfolios for central banks, insurance and pensions companies and retail investors. At present she is an independent Non Executive Director for Blackrock Fund Managers (London), EFG Asset Management and Capital Gearing Investment Trust.

Prior to her retirement, she was Global Head of Fixed Income for Axa Investment Managers, responsible for Euros 385 billion in assets.. She established the fixed income divisions of M and G Investment Management (1992) and New Star Asset Management (2001), having launched the first UK Corporate Bond unit trust and the first UK High Yield Corporate Bond Fund.

Theo received her PhD in History from Cambridge in 1985, with a thesis on the the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment (Smith and Ferguson) in France.

Tom Elliott is an investment strategist consultant, helping multi-asset management companies with their asset allocation decisions. Tom previously worked for the Mattioli Woods Group as a Senior Strategist, and at JP Morgan Asset Management in London for 18 years, leaving at Executive Director level. Before that he worked for four years as a company analyst, for stockbrokers Greig Middleton and Co.

Tom is also a visiting lecturer at King’s College (London University), in the department of political economy. He has a Master’s degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, and a degree in History from the University of Sussex.