IR and the Purpose-Driven Business and the Festival of IR

Gary Leibowitz is a seasoned global corporate strategy, finance and capital markets leader, with investment banking and private equity foundations and 20 years of leading CPG experience across the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, China. He currently serves as Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer at Unilever plc. Mr. Leibowitz has extensive experience driving business growth and transformation agendas at corporate and divisional levels. As a CPG strategy leader, his focus is on directing and coaching leadership teams in strategic opportunity assessment, choice-making, alignment, planning and eliciting external capital market support. As Senior Advisor in McKinsey’s Global Consumer Practice, he led strategy, portfolio, route-to-market/distribution, turnaround and M&A engagements for a range of CPG clients spanning leading incumbents and agile disruptors. For over a decade, Mr. Leibowitz contributed the dynamic growth of SABMiller plc, a $100 billion global beverage group and FTSE-10 listed company. As Senior Vice President, Internal and Investor Engagement, he helped the company achieve and sustain a fundamental equity re-positioning and re-rating through economic cycles, CEO and board change, JVs and major M&A (hostile and agreed). Previously he originated and managed private equity investments in CPG at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and began his career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch & Co. Mr. Leibowitz previously served for eight years on the board of the UK Investor Relations Society and in 2017 was presented with the IR Society’s Fellowship Award.

Naina Dhingra is a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s New York Office. Naina is a leader in our Organization Practice who works with private and social sector clients to strengthen individual, team and company performance by inspiring a purpose driven culture. She is passionate about helping organizations unlock the full potential of their people by tapping into purpose and meaning to remove barriers that get in the way of the impact people want to derive from work. She brings a purpose driven, people first lens to her work informed by her background in grassroots campaigns and global public health.

Naina counsels CEOs and executive teams on all elements of purpose driven culture include: diagnosing organizational health and performance, building top team alignment on organizational purpose, mission and values, designing capability building programs to improve employee experience, and realigning business models and practices in line with the company purpose.

Ed Humpherson was appointed as Director General for Regulation in October 2013 and took up post in January 2014. He is head of the Office for Statistics Regulation which provides independent regulation of all official statistics in the UK. The aim of OSR is to enhance public confidence in the trustworthiness, quality and value of statistics produced by government. Prior to joining the Authority, Ed was a Board Member and Executive Leader for Economic Affairs at the National Audit Office, a post he held since July 2009. This role included responsibility for the overall strategic direction of NAO’s work on economic affairs. Ed Humpherson was educated at the University of Edinburgh. Ed is a Chartered Accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Vicky Pryce is Chief Economic Adviser and a board member at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). She was previously Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, Director General for Economics at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Service. Before that she was Partner at the accounting and consulting firm KPMG after senior economic positions in banking and the oil sector. She has held a number of academic posts and is a Fellow and Council member of the UK Academy for Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Society of Professional Economists and a Companion of the British Academy of Management.. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the central banking think-tank OMFIF and of the Economic Advisory Group of the British Chambers of Commerce. She is also a Patron of the charities Pro-Bono Economics and Working Chance. Her books include: “Greekonomics: The Euro crisis and Why Politicians Don't Get It”; “It's the Economy, Stupid- Economics for Voters”, with Ross and Urwin; and “Redesigning Manufacturing”, with Nielsen and Beverland. “Her latest book, “Women vs Capitalism”, was published by Hurst in November 2019. She is co-founder of GoodCorporation, a company set up to advise on corporate social responsibility and is a Freeman and Liveryman of the City of London.

Douglas currently heads up the Investor Relations team at Lloyds Banking Group having been a senior member of the team at Lloyds Bank and subsequently Lloyds Banking Group for the last seven years. During this time he has been involved in all the normal Investor Relations activities including the development of the investment proposition, briefing of institutional investors and the development and production of corporate results and announcements. In addition he has been integrally involved in all the corporate actions and transactions undertaken by the Group during this period including the acquisition of HBOS, the capital raisings and the various business disposals. Prior to joining the Investor Relations team Douglas held management positions within Group Strategy, Group Risk and Private Banking having initially joined Lloyds Bank on the graduate development programme.

Holly Gillis is Head of Investor Relations at The Go-Ahead Group plc. She has over 15 years of experience in finance, corporate communications and investor relations roles in the UK public transport sector. Holly is an ACCA qualified accountant and has a Bsc in Psychology from Lancaster University.

Jack joined Greencore in May 2017. He established investor relations as a separate function at Greencore for the first time, working closely with the Group Executive team and the business to develop and communicate the equity story for the investment community. As well as developing and engaging IR strategies and communication for a multitude of capital market events, Jack has helped to develop and promote the Group’s ESG communication and engagement strategy launched in 2020, and he sits on the Group's Sustainability Steering Committee. Prior to joining Greencore, Jack spent over 20 years as a sell-side equity analyst at Davy in Dublin, specialising in European food ingredients research. Jack holds a B.Comm from University College Dublin.

An experienced Investor Relations professional, Isabel Green has worked across multiple sectors and geographies over the last 20 years. Currently Head of Investor Relations at FTSE 100 listed Rolls-Royce PLC and with prior IR experience in Oil & Gas, Banking and Travel & Leisure, Isabel has a broad understanding of the numerous challenges that corporates and investors are grapping with in today’s market. Isabel also spent several years as a sellside analyst at UBS, covering mid-cap consumer companies where she developed a core competence building investment cases for a wide range of businesses and critiquing company narratives for the investor audience.

Thomas Kudsk Larsen is Head of Investor Relations (IR) at AstraZenenca since 1 October 2014. Thomas leads the IR Team consisting of currently 8 people and is responsible for investor and analyst interactions. Thomas joined AstraZeneca from Roche where he was Head of Investor Relations North America since 2005 and Vice President, Roche Holdings, Inc. based at Genentech, Inc. in South San Francisco, USA. From 2004-2005, Thomas was Manager of Stakeholder Communications, Novozymes North America, North Carolina, USA and from 2001-2004 Manager, Investor Relations, Novozymes, a Danish industrial biotech company. From 2000-2001, Thomas was Financial analyst, Novo Nordisk Pharma, Tokyo, Japan and 1995-2000 worked in various Finance positions at Novo Nordisk, Denmark. Thomas holds HD Finance from Copenhagen Business School and is a Danish citizen. Thomas lives in Trumpington, Cambridge, UK with a family; wife and two daughters.

Paul Baker founded Morgan Stanley’s Corporate Broking team in May 2004, after spending 7 years with Merrill Lynch (3 as Co-Head of Corporate Broking) and 11 with Natwest Wood Mackenzie. The Corporate Broking team now has over 40 clients, including 25 FTSE-100 clients. Paul has been giving equity advice to leading companies for over 30 years on every aspect of their market positioning, cultivation of their investor bases, their strategic development, M&A and equity fund raising. Clients include Compass, Diageo, Glencore, HSBC, Reckitt, Rolls Royce and S4. Paul has a Law degree from Oxford University.

Greg is the founding principal of a boutique financial and strategy advisory firm, Spotlight Advisors, that specializes in providing advice in complex corporate situations, including shareholder activism, proxy contests and contested M&A transactions. Greg was previously a hedge fund portfolio manager and served as President of the Clinton Group, a multi-strategy hedge fund, from 2011 to 2014. Previously, Greg was the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Glass, Lewis & Co., an independent research firm that assists institutional investors evaluate corporate governance and in making more informed investment and proxy voting decisions. Prior to co-founding Glass Lewis, Greg was an investment banker. He provided strategic and financing advice to public and private companies, principally in the technology and telecommunications industries. Greg was a Vice President at Goldman, Sachs & Co., a Director of Epoch Partners and a Managing Director with Banc of America Securities.

Freddie is an equities analyst at Jupiter Asset Management, working on the Global Sustainable Equities strategy. Before joining Jupiter, Freddie was Head of Responsible Investment and Stewardship and Merian Global Investors. Prior to that he was a Responsible Investment Analyst in Newton Investment Management's equity research team. Before that he led the UK stewardship team at Hermes EOS. Freddie has a degree in Modern Languages from UCL and an MBA with distinction from Cass Business School. He is also a Fellow of the RSA.

Jessica Fries is Executive Chairman of The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S), established by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in 2004. She has led A4S since 2008, working with the finance community to catalyze a shift to a sustainable economy, with a focus on practical actions and targeted interventions capable of achieving global change. While at A4S, Jessica has been responsible for establishing the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), as well as A4S’s CFO Leadership Network and capital markets programme. Previously, Jessica held a number of roles at PwC advising a wide range of companies, governments, investors and not-for-profit organizations. Jessica has written extensively on ways to integrate sustainability into business and finance, and has been a member of a number of International, European and UK Government Committees, including the UK Treasury’s Sustainability Reporting Steering Committee, the European Commission’s Expert Group on Non-Financial Disclosure and the UN Sustainable Stock Exchange Advisory Group. She is currently a member of the IIRC Governance and Nominations Committee, the Smith School Global Sustainable Finance Advisory Council, the UN Global Assessment Report Advisory Council and the Global Reporting Initiative. Jessica is a chartered accountant, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, has an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and a BA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

Angela Broad oversees National Grid’s investor relations team in providing effective interface between the company and the investment community. She uses her wider energy market experience and passion for net zero to progress National Grid’s investment proposition and showcase to investors the real difference that the company is making in enabling the energy transition. She joined National Grid in 2021 following 8 years at BP plc where she was formerly senior group investor relations manager and more recently a business and commercial manager in BP’s gas and power trading division.

Kate is the founder of Veris Strategies, a strategic sustainability agency blending a unique fusion of hands on experience and creative expertise to tackle the climate crisis. Before starting Veris, Kate spent 7 years in a global marketing and communications role before applying her expertise to the waste industry and finding a passion for scaling sustainable impact through behaviour change and creative engagement. Ten years later, as one of Management Today's 35 Women under 35 and a Woman of the Future in recognition of her human-centred approach, now the business works with leading businesses from large plcs to boutique brands and start-ups on their climate strategies and ESG performance.

Shivani Kak heads the Investor Relations Team and is responsible for managing effective communications with the analytical community, as well as existing and potential shareholders. Prior to this role, she managed the US Structured Finance Relationship Management team within the Commercial Group. She joined Moody's in 2008 as a European RMBS analyst in the Structured Finance team. She moved to the Commercial department in 2011, to focus on Structured Finance business development, including secondments to both the Hong Kong and New York offices. She also spent time in the Product Management Group with global responsibility for product related requests and initiatives linked to Structured Finance and investor requested products. Prior to joining Moody's, she was a Director at Lehman Brothers, specializing in Structured Finance origination and structuring. Shivani holds an MBA from the Johnson School at Cornell University and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Russian and European Studies from the University of Surrey and speaks fluent Russian.