John Plender – Keynote Speaker

John Plender has been a senior editorial writer and global commentator at the Financial Times since 1981.

Plender was formerly financial editor of The Economist, where he remained until joining the UK Foreign Office policy planning staff in 1980. On leaving the Foreign Office, he became a writer and columnist at the Financial Times.

A past chairman of Pensions and Investment Research Consultants (Pirc), the UK shareholder activist and corporate governance consultancy, Plender served on the UK Government’s Company Law Review steering group which provided the groundwork for the Companies Act 2006. He joined the board of Quintain PLC as a non-executive director in 2002 and chaired the company from 2007-09. He is currently chairman of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, as well as being a trustee of the £3.5bn Pearson Group Pension Fund.

Among a number of other roles, Plender is a member of the OECD/World Bank Private Sector Advisory Group on Corporate Governance and a member of the Advisory Council of the Association of Corporate Treasurers. He was the winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism. His books include Going Off The Rails – Global Capital And The Crisis Of Legitimacy (John Wiley), which anticipated the 2007-8 financial crisis, and Capitalism – Money, Morals and Markets (Biteback).