The Leading Speakers Bureau

Former Norwegian Prime Minister and Former Director General of the WHO (World Health Organisation)

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland is one of the most influential women of the late twentieth century.

In 1998, Gro was elected Director-General of the World Health Organization. She is one of Norway’s most respected and experienced politicians.

“One of the most influential Europeans in the last 25 years” The Financial Times

[expand title=”In detail”] Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland’s was Prime Minister of Norway on several different occasions and Chairwoman of the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), now called The Brundtland Commission. She has been awarded several prestigious awards in recognition of her work, among which the Third World Prize for Work on Environmental Issues 1989, the Indira Gandhi Prize in 1990 as well as the Onassis Foundation Award in 1992 and the Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Dr. Brundtland is a formidable speaker, who draws on her considerable expertise and own personal experiences to provide excellent observations and analysis of the current political landscape. She is also a respected author on preventative medicine, school health and growth studies. She is also part of our Top Women keynote speakers. [/expand]
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Leading Authority on the World Economy and Former Chief Economist at HSBC

One of the City of London’s best-known economists, Roger Bootle runs the consultancy, Capital Economics, which specialises in macroeconomics and the economics of the property market. He is also Economic Adviser to Deloitte, a Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and a Visiting Professor at Manchester Business School.

“Some of the greatest blunders occur not through errors of fact, but errors of logic”

[expand title=”In detail”] He was formerly Group Chief Economist of the HSBC Group and, before the change of government, he was a member of the former Chancellor’s panel of Independent Economic Advisers, the so-called “Wise Men”. A regular columnist on The Sunday Telegraph, Roger also appears frequently on national television and radio.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Roger Bootle’s expertise on World and European economics is a valuable source of information for decision makers around the globe. Business leaders will benefit from his astute insights and analytical brilliance of the economic landscape.[/expand]

[expand title=”How he presents”]An engaging and informative speaker, Roger uses his wealth of experience to give audiences valuable insights into the current state of global economics. He is witty, incisive and to the point making him highly sought-after as a keynote and conference speaker. [/expand]
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Authority on EU Enlargement and the Strategic Relevance of the Euro

Lode Beckers is an international financier and banker. After a 28-year corporate banking career with Citibank in 7 countries, Lode became a board member in two private banks – in Belgium and France -, while founding LOBO N.V., a fund management firm and consulting firm focusing on Euro-related strategic and organisational matters.

Over the past 6 years, trade and industry federations, governments and leading corporations frequently called upon Lode’s expertise in assessing the impact of the Euro on business with European trade partners and in the European Single Market area.

[expand title=”In detail”] Currently Lode is chairman and Managing Director of a Brussels-based consulting firm advising companies on strategies to adopt following the introduction of the Euro and the emergence of an effective single market in Europe. In addition he is one of the members of the EU-chartered Groupeuro’s group of experts mandated by the EU Commission to inform various professional audiences of the effects of the single European currency.

While acting as a presenter and company director, Lode Beckers continued to be a board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium. He also held teaching assignments at the Universities of Leuven, Paris X (Nanterre), and St. Petersburg (Russia). Lode holds Law and Political Science degrees from the University of Leuven. He is an alumni of Wharton’s International Forum and obtained an AMP certification from INSEAD (Fr.).[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Since Lode started his consulting firm LOBO, he has contributed to the success of over 300 conferences, corporate off site meetings, and seminars. His lively presentation style and his long-standing personal expertise have made him a highly rated guest speaker and discussion panel director at major corporate gatherings or client events.[/expand]
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Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School

Prof. Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor and a Novartis Fellow at Harvard Business School. Currently, he teaches in Harvard’s comprehensive general management executive education programs. His current research focuses on understanding the drivers of entrepreneurship worldwide.

In 2007, he was nominated to be a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum

[expand title=”In detail”] Prof. Khanna has served as course head of the strategy course in the Harvard MBA program, and chaired the executive education program on Strategy, Leadership and Governance. He is actively involved in mentoring startups in Asia. His scholarly work has been published in a range of journals over the past fifteen years, he is also serving as a co-editor of several prestigious economics and management journals. His first book, ‘Foundations of Neural Networks’, has been translated into Italian and Japanese, and is widely used as a reference text in engineering and applied science departments.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Serving on the advisory boards of several multinational and emerging market companies in the financial services, automotive, life sciences and agribusiness sectors, Tarun Khanna has experience in a wide variety of industries. Providing valuable insights into emerging markets, strategy and leadership and business in China and India, Professor Khanna is in great demand with audiences worldwide.[/expand]
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Leading Business Specialist on Asia

In January 2006 he left Arthur D. Little’s Asia Pacific Advisory Council, where he was Vice Chairman providing council on high level strategic and operational issues for companies in the Asia Pacific region.

“One of the best managers ever seen in China”

[expand title=”In detail”] Martin’s prolific career began in the automotive industry. He is the former Commercial Executive & Deputy Managing Director of the Shanghai-Volkswagen Automotive Company in China. Continue Reading »

Leading Management Strategist

Dr. Kenichi Ohmae is an acclaimed management strategist renowned for his work on globalisation and the borderless economy. He is a concert playing flutist, a nuclear physicist, would-be politician, a former McKinsey consultant and much more. He is also the dean of two private schools in Tokyo: Isshinjuku, which studies public policy, and Attacker’s Advantage, which studies Entrepreneurship. He is also the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA School of Public and Social Research.


The Financial Times called Kenichi Ohmae “Japan’s only Management Guru”

Kenichi Ohmae has been ranked among the top 50 most influential business thinkers. In 2009 Thinkers 50, the global ranking of management gurus, placed him among the list of most influential thinkers

[expand title=”In detail”] A graduate of Waseda Unversity and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ohmae joined McKinsey consultants in 1972 after the completion of his PhD at MIT. He spent 23 years at McKinsey where he cofounded its strategic management practice, eventually leaving to stand for the Governorship of Tokyo in 1995.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]His special area of expertise is formulating creative strategies and developing the organizational concepts to implement them. Some of the world’s most successful companies continue to seek his help in shaping their competitive global strategies. He urges executives to tap into the new global stage and its new platforms of economic power and growth.[/expand]
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Bestselling Author on China

James Kynge is Editor of China Confidential, a specialist research service at the Financial Times that focuses on the Chinese economy. He has spent 16 of the last 25 years living in China, first as a Reuters reporter in the 1980s, then as the FT Bureau Chief in Beijing for seven years until 2005, and subsequently as an executive heading up the Pearson Group of companies’ operations in the PRC. His award-winning 2006 book, ‘China Shakes the World’, was an international bestseller, translated into 19 languages.

“The future may be involved less with how the world is changing China than how China is changing the world” James Kynge

[expand title=”In detail”] As a journalist for over two decades in Asia, James covered several of the events that have helped shape the region, reporting from China, Taiwan, Japan, Mongolia, former Soviet Central Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and other locations. As executive overseeing businesses in media, publishing and education, he executed an ambitious market entry strategy that involved acquiring three Chinese companies, launching two start-ups and managing a complex matrix of government relations.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]As a speaker, James weaves his impressions together with gentle humour to elucidate some of the biggest questions of our time. Can Europe and America compete with a rising China? Can the world accommodate a country that is in its character and convictions very different from the world created under Pax Americana since the end of World War Two? He also talks in greater detail about the economic, social and political changes sweeping China itself, drawing on an association with the country that goes back to 1982.

A much respected voice on developments in China, his relentless pursuit of the truth allows James to offer unique presentations that are informative, insightful and unforgettable.[/expand]
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Global Business Specialist

John A. Caslione is a global business specialist.

He is founder, president and CEO of Andrew-Ward International, Inc. – a global marketing and sales organisation – that supports organisations with their global business strategy.

Currently, he also lectures on the global economy and global business development at Institute for Management Development, IMD, in Lausanne, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

He shows you how to take advantage of global opportunities.

[expand title=”In detail”] Furthermore, he is co-founder and co-managing partner of GCS Business Capital GmbH, which specialises in advising European and Chinese small and medium size enterprises, SMEs, in globalising their business. The University of New York is where he gained his Bachelors of Science and MBA, and he gained his Doctorate of Law from Illinois Institute of Technology.[/expand]

[expand title=”What he offers you”]Combining case study examples with his wealth of experience he shows you how to address the most challenging of global business issues. Thriving in the global business market is broken down into what, how and when. He looks at what your competitive advantage is, how to develop a global strategy and when, where and who your marketing messages should reach.[/expand]
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