Alex Edmans
Professor of Finance at London Business School; Author, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit
SPEAKER FEE RANGE: $14,500–$40,000 [FEE NOTE]
TRAVELS FROM: International
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. He is an expert in corporate governance, purposeful business, practical investment strategies, behavioural finance, and time management. Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and won the Financial Times award for Excellence in Sustainable Finance Education.
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS.
Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance. He is Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Financial Management Association.
Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.5 million views. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.
Alex serves as a Non-Executive Director of The Investor Forum, which promotes collaborative engagement between investors and companies, on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, and on the Steering Group of The Purposeful Company, a UK consortium of leaders in responsible business. The UK government appointed him (jointly with PwC) to study the alleged misuse of share buybacks and the link between executive pay and investment. Alex is also Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College, giving a four-year programme of lectures to the public. His series are on The Principles of Finance (2021/2), The Psychology of Finance (2020/1), Business Skills for the 21st Century (2019/20) and How Business Can Better Serve Society (2018/9).
Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and won the Financial Times award for Excellence in Sustainable Finance Education; it has been or is being translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish. He is a co-author of the 14th edition of Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen).
Alex was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. He has won 24 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS, won the Finance for the Future award for Driving Change in the finance community, and featured in Thinkers50 Radar.
Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance. He is Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe, and was inducted as a Fellow of the Financial Management Association.
Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.5 million views. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.
Alex serves as a Non-Executive Director of The Investor Forum, which promotes collaborative engagement between investors and companies, on Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee, and on the Steering Group of The Purposeful Company, a UK consortium of leaders in responsible business. The UK government appointed him (jointly with PwC) to study the alleged misuse of share buybacks and the link between executive pay and investment. Alex is also Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Business at Gresham College, giving a four-year programme of lectures to the public. His series are on The Principles of Finance (2021/2), The Psychology of Finance (2020/1), Business Skills for the 21st Century (2019/20) and How Business Can Better Serve Society (2018/9).
Alex’s book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit, was featured in the Financial Times Best Business Books of 2020 and won the Financial Times award for Excellence in Sustainable Finance Education; it has been or is being translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish. He is a co-author of the 14th edition of Principles of Corporate Finance (with Brealey, Myers, and Allen).
Alex was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021. He has won 24 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS, won the Finance for the Future award for Driving Change in the finance community, and featured in Thinkers50 Radar.
- Business Skills for the 21st Century
There are critical skills in business that are rarely taught at university or business school. Alex Edmans will share some of the key skills you need to succeed in business in the 21st century, including:
• Time management
• Public speaking
• Pursuing a purposeful career
• Mental and physical wellness
• Critical thinking
• Adopting a “growth mindset”
This presentation is both evidence-based and practical, applicable to all ages and professions, and goes beyond what is traditionally taught. - How Business Can Better Serve Society
Corporate businesses have lost the public’s trust. Since the financial crisis, there has been the strong view that the financial sector — which employs some of the highest-paid individuals — has little benefit for society. How do we know if businesses exist to make profits or to serve a purpose? How can businesses improve poor corporate governance?
Various remedies have been proposed, however, just like in medicine, diagnosis precedes treatment. Contrary to conventional wisdom that there is a trade-off between purpose and profit, Alex Edmans believes that there doesn’t need to be a trade-off at all.
In this presentation, Edmans will critically analyze the evidence on whether corporate activism is beneficial for long-term value, address best practices for shareholder engagement, and suggest policies to promote the “good” type of shareholder engagement.
Key takeaways:
• What optimal governance should look like, including issues such as boardroom diversity, independence of directors, and employee representation.
• How to promote the “good” type of shareholder engagement. - The Psychology of Business
Learn how World Cup football results can drive the stock market, why simply changing the name of a stock can cause its price to soar, and how gyms dupe us into buying memberships that we rarely use.
In this presentation, Alex Edmans illustrates how psychological biases can distort the financial decisions made by investors, CEOs, and citizens. He’ll explain how we can be on the lookout for these biases and harness this awareness to improve our own decision-making.
This talk is accessible for all ages and professions — think of it as a cross between “Freakonomics” and a TED talk but applied to every financial decision. - The Pie-Growing Mindset
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