Rt Hon Danny Alexander
Danny joined the shadow Work and Pensions team in 2005 and in July 2007 he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, holding the post until June 2008. He gave this up to concentrate on the roles of Chief of Staff to the party leader, Nick Clegg, and Chair of the Manifesto group. He played a key role in the negotiating team and in the drawing up of the coalition document for the new Government. Danny was initially appointed Secretary of State for Scotland. At the end of May 2010, he was promoted to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Danny was appointed to the Privy Council in May 2010.
Angela Knight CBE
Angela set up and was Chief Executive of a specialist contract heat treatment company treating precision
engineering components.
From 1987 to 1992 she was Councillor and Chief Whip on Sheffield City Council. She entered Parliament
in 1992 as MP for Erewash and was Economic Secretary to the Treasury. She lost her seat at the 1997 General
Election. She was the Chief Executive of the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and
Stockbrokers from September 1997 to December 2006.
She became the Chief Executive of the British Bankers Association in April 2007. She is also a
non-executive director on the board of Brewin Dolphin plc.
Luke Johnson
Luke Johnson is a serial entrepreneur, best known for his involvement with PizzaExpress, which he grew from 12 restaurants to 250. He is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, former chairman of Channel 4, and writes a regular column for the Financial Times on entrepreneurship. He also co-founded the Strada restaurant chain and is Chairman of Giraffe restaurants.
Ian Mackintosh
Ian Mackintosh is currently Vice Chair designate of the International Accounting Standards Board. He will formally join that board on 1 July 2011. Ian was Chair of the UK Accounting Standards Board from 2004 to 2011. Prior to that he was a financial management manager at the World Bank, Chief Accountant at the Australian Securities and Investment Commission and, for 20 years, a partner of Coopers and Lybrand (now PWC).
Professor Costas Markides
Costas Markides is Professor of Strategic and International Management and holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at the London Business School. A native of Cyprus, he received his BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics from Boston University, and his MBA and DBA from the Harvard Business School. He is the author of several books (including Fast Second and Game-Changing Strategies) and serves on the editorial Boards of several academic journals.
Hugh Shields
Hugh Shields is currently Head of External Reporting at Deutsche Bank, which he joined in January 2010. Hugh was voted one of the 50 most influential accountants in the UK in 2010. Hugh was a Senior Scholar at Cambridge University, where he read Economics.
Professor James Woudhuysen
James is Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, Leicester. A St Paul’s School scholar and physics graduate, he has a knack of registering trends before other people, and offering counter-intuitive proposals on what to do about those trends. The only things James does not forecast are the weather, the stock market, the horses and your own personal destiny.
More speakers will be added to the line up soon