Speakers
Alistair Darling
Robert Smith
The Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP has been a Member of Parliament since 1987 and represents the Edinburgh South West Constituency. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2007 to 2010 during the worst global financial crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression. Alistair is one of only three who served continuously in the Labour Government’s Cabinet from 1997 to 2010. He was initially appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1997. Seen as a ‘safe pair of hands’, he become Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in 1998 and after four years in this Department he became Secretary of State for Transport and later Secretary of State for Scotland. His penultimate cabinet post was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry from 2006.
Alistair Darling studied law at Aberdeen University and was a solicitor and then an Advocate at the Scottish Bar. He lives in Edinburgh with his family.
Following the General Election in May 2010, where he increased his majority, Alistair announced his intention to step back from front line politics after 23 years on the front bench and to return to the backbenches from where he would continue to serve his constituents in Edinburgh.
Alistair is author of the book Back from the Brink published in 2011. He is currently Chair of the Better Together Campaign which is a cross-party campaign that promotes the view that Scotland is a better and stronger country as part of the United Kingdom.
Robert Smith, Baron Smith of Kelvin, has a strong financial services background and a wealth of experience gleaned from a wide range of positions. Currently Chairman of SSE at the UK Green Investment Bank, which is the second largest producer of energy in the UK and has the largest renewables portfolio in Britain, he has a comprehensive knowledge of energy trends.
Baron Smith is also Chairman of The Weir Group plc, Glasgow 2014 (the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee, and Non-executive Director of Standard Bank Group Ltd. He has held positions on various private and public boards including the Financial Services Authority and Financial Reporting Council (FRC), and a number of key positions within the banking industry. He chaired the group set up by the FRC in 2003 to clarify the role of audit committees. He is the present Chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland and is also Patron of the Scottish Community Foundation.
Seth Armitage
Owen Kelly
Seth Armitage is Professor of Finance and Head of the Accounting & Finance Group at the University of Edinburgh's Business School.
Mr Armitage joined the University of Edinburgh as a lecturer in finance in 1989, having previously worked as a credit analyst and lending officer for two merchant banks. He has since taught a wide range of finance courses on undergraduate, MBA and MSc programmes, and for companies. In 2002 he moved to Heriot-Watt University, where he established an MSc in Finance and became Head of Department of Accounting and Finance. He rejoined Edinburgh in 2007, where his current teaching and research interests are mainly in corporate finance.
Mr Armitage holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (Oxford), an MPhil in Philosophy of Mind (St Andrews), and a PhD in Finance (Edinburgh). His research interests focus on corporate finance, alongside financial markets and institutions, although of particular importance is equity offers by listed companies. Other interests and past projects include a book, The Cost of Capital: Intermediate Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2005); development of a value-based measure of the performance of managed funds; work on mutual financial institutions; and an event-study test of whether banks obtain private information when lending to companies (PhD thesis).
Owen Kelly was appointed as Chief Executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE) in January 2008. The SFE is a broadly-based representative organization, funded by its members whose purpose is to promote the Scottish financial services industry and Scotland as an international financial centre. SFE’s membership is diverse and it includes some of the world’s largest banks, insurers and asset managers, as well as companies providing specialist support services, universities and government agencies.
Before joining SFE in January 2008, Owen worked for 20 years as a government official, in UK and Scottish Governments. His key policy specialisms in government were EU and international relations; and communications. He spent 2 years in Tokyo in the 1990s, promoting Scotland as an investment location.
Owen joined the government service in 1988, shortly after graduating from Edinburgh University with an honours degree in Mandarin Chinese. He studied for one year at Shandong University in 1983/84.
He speaks, reads and writes Mandarin Chinese but has forgotten most of his Japanese. He is married with 3 children. His interests include reading and walking his dog in the Scottish countryside.
Peter Griffiths
Peter Griffiths was appointed CEO of Sainsbury's Bank in November 2012, joining the Bank at an exciting phase of its growth with the business having enjoyed four consecutive years of profit growth. Nevertheless, in the three months following his appointment, with Mr Griffiths at its helm the Bank delivered another strong performance with total new business volumes up by 37% year on year.
Mr Griffiths is former Chairman of the CBI Council in Wales and the Building Societies Association. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2010, in recognition of his support for the Financial Services Industry. He has previously worked with Principality, Wales’ largest building society, management consultant Morgan Chambers and started his career with 23 years at NatWest, where he left as Head of Commercial Services for NatWest Group IT.
Between March 2002 and his Sainsbury’s Bank appointment, Mr Griffiths was Group Chief Executive of Principality, Wales’ largest building society. During a decade in charge of the mutual fund, he grew the business from the 13th largest building society in the UK to the 7th, increasing assets from £2.2 billion to £6.4 billion.
Jens Hagendorff
Jens Hagendorff is the Martin Currie Professor in Finance & Investment at The University of Edinburgh, having previously worked at the Financial Stability Department of The Bank of Spain and as a lecturer at The University of Leeds. He is a regular speaker at conferences and various government agencies in Europe and the U.S., including The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Recently, he was also a visiting fellow at The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Mr Hagendorff teaches on a range of programmes on Banking and Investments, including executive and MBA programmes. He has recently become a member of Royal Society of Edinburgh Young Academy of Scotland. He also acts as a consultant to commercial and central banks as well as to asset management firms on finance, investment and banking issues.
Mr Hagendorff’s work has been published in highly-ranked international journals such as the Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Financial Services Research, and Journal of Business Ethics. He is one of the authors of a forthcoming book with Oxford University Press, "Size, Risk and Governance in European Banking".
Stuart Rowan
Stuart Rowan graduated from Edinburgh University with an MA in Economics in 2009, after completing postgraduate work at the University of Cape Town in advanced Macro Economics and Econometrics he taught privately at the university.
Following his return to the UK, he began work as a multi-asset investment analyst at the now defunct Tenon Investment Solutions covering emerging market debt, equities, portfolio stress testing and risk analysis.
Thereafter he worked as a risk analyst at Kredit Bank Luxembourg’s UK subsidiary where, amongst other things, he designed the stress tests for the bank’s loan book. He now works in quantitative risk at Kames Capital and is tasked with covering the firm’s retail and institutional equity funds worth a combined £15 billion*.
*As at 30th of June 2013
Laurentiu Prodan
Laurentiu Prodan graduated from Edinburgh University with an MInf in Informatics (Artificial Intelligence) and joined Citi as an M&A/IBD Analyst after having previously interned with the same organisation.
He worked in the Emerging Markets Group and is now part of Citi's Global Industrials Group (covering Diversified Industrials, Transportation and Infrastructure, Metals and Mining and Chemicals).
Previously Mr Prodan undertook 2 undergraduate research internships (whilst at Edinburgh) and took part in different corporate initiatives/programs/internships at IBM, Procter & Gamble and Google. Laurentiu was also strongly involved in EUTIC's activities whilst still a student.
Simon Clark
Dr Simon Clark has been Head of the School of Economics at the University of Edinburgh since 2009, a role that puts him in a perfect position to not just view but also help shape the future of the financial industry. In addition to his role as Head of School, Dr Clark is involved with the university's Academy of Government, helping to train the next generation of leaders in public service. Within this role, Dr Clark convenes the course 'Economics of Public Policy.'
He was educated at the London School of Economics. His PhD was written under the supervision of the late Michio Morishima on problems of economic planning. Prior to joining Edinburgh, he worked as an economic analyst in the financial markets in the City of London, and then as a lecturer at Bristol University. He has held visiting positions at Queen's University, Canada, and at the European University Institute.
Dr Clark has acted as an assessor for entry to the UK Government Economic Service and has also stood for both the UK and Scottish Parliaments. He is no stranger to chairing panel debates, having notably done so during the Adam Smith Lecture series of 2012.