Corporate Governance: "Convergence of European Board Practice - an Attainable Goal?"

Location:British Ambassador's Residence Paris Date: 07 April 2014 Time:18:30 - 21:00

Germany, France and the UK have all introduced revised governance codes in the last year, and the outgoing European Commission is hurrying its remaining reforms to the finishing line. The time is right for leading corporate governance specialists and company directors to review what Europe has achieved through sustained attention to governance codification, and whether those who are directly responsible for applying the codes in our major European listed corporates are satisfied with the result.

Corporate governance is carried out by individuals in their capacity as directors: the definition of the roles and responsibilities of directors is at the heart of governance. As membership organisations whose members are company directors, the conference organisers IoD (UK), HEC Alumni (France), IFA (France), VARD (Germany) are particularly interested in the role – the very central role – which individual directors play in corporate governance.

Sir Peter Ricketts, British Ambassador will say the opening words. There will be an introduction by Simon Walker, Director General IoD and the closing remarks will be by Agnès Touraine, President Elect IFA.

The panel discussion will be moderated by David Burns, Vice-Chairman IoD France and the round table panel are: Peter Dehnen (Germany), Mireille Faugère (France) and Jean-Claude Guez (UK).

The event will be in English and French, no simultaneous translation will be provided. The round table will be followed by a cocktail.

The Conference Speakers:

Simon Walker
Simon Walker became Director General of the Institute of Director in October 2011. Previously he was Chief Executive of the BVCA, the organisation that represents British private equity and venture capital from October 2007. Between 2003 and 2007 Simon worked at Reuters as Director of Corporate Communications and Mar- keting.  He was Communications Secretary to HM The Queen at Buckingham Palace from 2000 to 2003.  Earlier he served as Director of Corporate Affairs at British Airways and a non-executive director of Comair Ltd (South Africa).  From 1996-1997 Simon worked as a special adviser in the Prime Ministers Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street. Simon was a partner at Brunswick, the public relations group, and Director of European Public Affairs for Hill & Knowlton in Brussels. He has been a member of the Better Regulation Commission, a Trustee of The Queen’s Golden Jubilee Trust, the New Zealand-UK Link Association, and the UK-US Jamestown Committee.  He is a governor for the environmental foundation, The Hillary Summit, a Council Member of the European Policy Forum and a member of the Parliamentary Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Public Engagement.

Agnès Touraine
Agnès Touraine, who will be president of IFA from 23 May is today president of Act III Consultants, a consultancy firm specialised in digital transformation. She was previously CEO of Vivendi Universal Publishing (€4,7Bn) following 10 years at Groupe Lagardère at 5 years with  McKinsey. She is a board member of Darty Plc, Neopost and Coriolis. She is also on the boards of The French- American Foundation, The Women’s Forum and of l’IDATE.

David Burns. 
David is a French and British national working in both countries. In France he is administrateur of Segard Masurel s.a. and trustee of two not-for-profit organisations. In the United Kingdom he has a number of roles including Chairman of the Bridge House group and Finance Director of the Natural Resources group. David worked for 20 years with Shell and BASF, and from 2000 to 2007 was the secretary of the audit commit- tee of Basell, subsequently LyondellBasell Industries N.V., a Netherlands-registered company with securities listed in the United States. David is Vice-Chairman of IoD France.

Peter H. Dehnen 
Vice-Chairman Vereinigung der Aufsichtsräte in Deutschland e.V. (VARD) Peter H. Dehnen is owner and CEO of GermanBoardRoom GmbH, the leading German full service provider for Supervisory Board members. Peter has over 30 years of experience as International Tax and Business lawyer, admitted in Düsseldorf (Germa- ny) and Washington, D.C. He is Vice-chair of the International Developments Subcommittee of the American Bar Association (ABA) Corporate Governance Committee and a frequent lecturer on German and Internatio- nal Corporate Governance. Peter Dehnen is Vice-Chairman and co-founder of „Vereinigung der Aufsichtsräte in Deutschland e.V. (VARD)“, the German Directors’ Association, and he is a member of the Board of Directors of the European Confederation of Directors’ Associations (ecoDa) in Brussels.

Mireille Faugère  
Graduate of Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris in 1978, Mireille Faugère spent most of her career at SNCF where he had several operational leadership roles before launching & running in 2003 Voyages-sncf.com. From September 2010 to November 2013 she was Directrice générale de l’Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris. Mireille Faugère is today a non-executive board member of Essilor International and of EDF et chairs the Ethics Commission of the Board of EDF. She is a board member of the Fondation l’Oréal pour la recherché and President  of HEC Alumni.

Jean-Claude Guez 
From 1965 to 2002, Jean Claude was Consultant then Worldwide partner at  Accenture. He is now non-executive director for several international London-listed PLCs & private UK companies: Exel Logistics, DHL Logistics plc, Invensys plc, Eurostar Group Ltd, Eurostar UK Ltd, Eurostar International Ltd. and sits on the boards as President of Nomination Committees , Remuneration Committees as well as Special Strategic Projects  Committees and  member of  Audit Committees. He is an active member of IFA » in France , of  IoD » and of  DirectorBank in the UK.

The cost of this event is €40 - click here to book on-line