Our guests:
Sir Roger Gifford is a Senior Banker at SEB in London. He read Chemistry at Oxford University and began his career in the financial sector at S.G. Warburg & Co, joining SEB in 1982. Prior to his appointment as UK Country Head (2000 – 2016) Roger headed the bank’s operations in Japan for six years. He has worked in and around the primary debt and equity capital markets most of his career.
Roger is Vice Chairman and a past Chairman of the Association of Foreign Banks in London, President of the Bank Workers Charity and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange (IBDE). He is also Chair of the UK Government’s Green Finance Taskforce and the London Green Finance Initiative, launched in 2016 to further the contribution of the financial sector to the G20 climate agenda. He was Lord Mayor of London in 2013.
Our guest host Michael Mainelli is a qualified accountant, securities professional, computer specialist, and management consultant, educated at Harvard University and Trinity College Dublin, he gained his PhD at London School of Economics where he was also a Visiting Professor. He began his career as a research scientist in aerospace & cartography. His biggest technical claim to fame might be the first commercial digital map of the world, MundoCart, crucial to the foundation of the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
He has led Z/Yen from creating smart ledgers (aka blockchains) through the Financial £aboratory, Taskforce 2000, Long Finance, Global Financial Centres Index, Global Green Finance Index, and Global Intellectual Property Index.
He is a non-executive director of two listed firms and a regulator, Alderman of the City of London for Broad Street, Emeritus Professor & Trustee at Gresham College, Fellow of Goodenough College, trustee of several charities, and Master of the Worshipful Company of World Traders.
Anne Maria Cronin has over 25 years of experience working in sustainable/green economy financing and responsible investment in emerging markets primarily in banking and private equity. Before setting up Quarter Penny Consulting Ltd she was Associate Director in the Environmental and Sustainability Department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) based in London. One of her roles at the EBRD was as E&S advisor to the EBRD’s Green Economy Finance Facility (GEFF) programme which provides credit lines to banks to help assist SME businesses, corporate and residential borrowers and renewable energy project developers invest in high performance/energy efficient/green technologies.
She has also developed sustainability strategies, policy and procedures, environmental and social risk management systems, provided training and capacity building around sustainability mainly based on International Financial Institutions (IFI) standards such as those of the EBRD, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Equator Principles. Anne Maria worked closely with the United Nations Environment Programme for Financial Institutions (UNEPFI) and was chair of the former Central and Eastern Europe Task Force within UNEPFI.