Paul Lee

Chair of the Judging Panel

Paul Lee is the Head of Stewardship and Sustainable Investment Strategy at Redington. He has worked for the last 20 years as a specialist in engagement and stewardship, helping build businesses and develop best practice over that time. He was part of the small team that created and built the Hermes Equity Ownership Service (EOS) business, worked as Head of Investment Affairs for the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF, now the PLSA) and most recently was Head of Corporate Governance – Stewardship at Aberdeen Asset Management, leaving following the merger with Standard Life.
Paul is one of three investor members of the UK Endorsement Board, which is responsible for approving IFRS accounting standards for application in the UK, and chairs its Investor Advisory Group. He is also a member of the Sustainability Disclosure Technical Advisory Committee, which will provide advice to the Secretary of State on the adoption of ISSB reporting standards in the UK.

James Ashton

Chief Executive, Quoted Companies Alliance (QCA)

James Ashton is Chief Executive of the Quoted Companies Alliance, the members’ organisation that champions small and mid-sized companies whose shares are publicly traded. James was City Editor and Executive Editor of the Evening Standard and Independent titles and before that City Editor of the Sunday Times. He is the author of several business books and chairs Oscar’s Book Prize, the annual search for the UK’s best picture book. James is also a non-executive director of Finsbury Growth & Income, the FTSE 250 investment trust.

Emma Burdett

Partner - Capital Markets, H/Advisors Maitland

Emma is one of the partners at H/Advisors Maitland and heads the Capital markets, IR & Governance practice. She has over 30 years of City and investment and capital markets experience and has worked on a wide variety of key client projects in investor relations, from unlisted through small and mid-cap to FTSE 100 companies and including ECM work, IPO’s and M&A. More recently her remit has developed to include Debt IR, ESG for investors and regulation. Emma joined H/Advisors Maitland after 14 years as an equity sell-side analyst in the City working at Hoare Govett and ABN Amro, where she was Global Director for the general retail sector. Emma was awarded an Honorary Fellowship from the UK IR Society in Nov 2022 - recognising her significant contribution to the Investor Relations industry. She was Chair of the Investor Relations Society Policy Committee for 9 years, a significant influence in the UK regulatory and corporate governance environment, interacting regularly with regulators and key industry bodies and helping form policy. She sat on the Board of the Investor Relations Society over the same time. Emma also contributed to the FTSE 100 Group IR & Markets committee.

Dr Yasmine Chahed

Independent Senior Advisor and Research Consultant, Visiting Research Fellow Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS)

Dr Yasmine Chahed is an independent senior advisor and research consultant delivering outside-in challenge, technical knowledge, and hands-on experience to high-impact strategic initiatives, technical policy, thought leadership and change programmes across corporate reporting, governance, auditing, and ESG topics.

A snapshot of her contributions to key policy, professional, and commercial initiatives includes the Brydon Independent Review into the Quality and Effectiveness of Audit for the UK Government and the UK Financial Reporting Council’s (FRC) major project on the Future of Corporate Reporting.

Yasmine leverages a strong academic background, combining insight from 15+ years of independent research and teaching at top-ranked universities, including a PhD in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Yasmine also serves on the Technical Strategy Board (TSB) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

John Dawson

Head of Investor Relations, Coca-Cola HBC

Andy Griffiths

Executive Director, The Investor Forum

Andy recently stepped down as Executive Director of the Investor Forum which he founded in 2014. He has 30 years of international investment experience as a top-rated investment professional at Capital Group and M&G. Throughout his career Andy has been responsible for financial sector investments and has consistently been ranked among the leading equity investors in Europe. Andy was also an Operating Partner with Corsair Capital between 2014 and 2018.

Andy is a Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics and a former Fulbright Commissioner.

Anna Hartropp

Director, Anna Hartropp Ltd

Anna runs a specialist investor relations search firm.

She previously held roles within IR at small, mid and large cap companies and worked as an IR consultant. Anna has also worked as an Advisor at Liberum Capital, working with listed companies, as well as helping to bring private companies to the market.

She has been an active member of the Investor Relations Society, sitting on the Membership and Conference Committees, and regularly participates with events run by the Society.

Abigail Herron

Global Head of ESG Strategic Partnerships, Sustainable Finance Centre for Excellence, Aviva Investors

During her 17 years in responsible investment she has covered the A to Z of ESG topics - from aviation emissions to zero hour contracts. She is currently working on the Aviva Investor’s Sustainable Finance Centre for Excellence which is building and delivering the world’s most ambitious ESG agenda on market reform and pushing boundaries toward a more sustainable financial system through thought leadership, advocacy and education. The scope of this work includes, but is not limited to, market reform activity to compliment company engagement around antibiotic resistance, biodiversity, climate change, net zero, pollution, human rights, gender and diversity, and a just transition.

On maternity leave, she completed a Masters focusing on antibiotic resistance at the University of Cambridge which won the Forum pour l´Investissement Responsable (French Social Investment Forum) and Principles of Responsible Investment (UNPRI) award for best Master’s thesis, 2020. She works with the Investor Action on AMR project to address the market failure of AMR.

Tom Hinton

Elly Irving

Director Of Stewardship, Lazard Asset Management

Elly Irving is Director of Stewardship in the Sustainable Investment and ESG team. She is focused on developing our stewardship strategy, supporting our portfolio managers and analysts on their engagements, monitoring engagement impact and aligning our proxy voting and engagement activities. Prior to joining Lazard in 2021, she was Head of Engagement at Schroders where she developed the engagement framework and infrastructure for equity and credit investment teams globally and supporting ESG integration. Elly joined Schroders in 2014 as an ESG Sector Analyst covering Consumer Staples and Discretionary. This role focused on thematic research, publishing investment-focused research on modern slavery, sugar & obesity trends, living wages and single use plastics. Elly co-founded the Investor Expectations on Sugar and Obesity trends, a collaborative engagement which was endorsed by £1.3trn of assets. Prior to Schroders Elly held ESG roles at Newton, where she focused on proxy voting and company level ESG analysis and started her career at F&C (now BMO Asset Management) where she focused on screening for ethical funds. Elly holds a BA (Hons) in Business Studies with Accounting & Finance from Nottingham Trent University. She passed CFA level 1 and has completed the Investment Management Certificate.

Professor Ken Lee

Accounting & Finance Group, Loughborough Business School

Kenneth is an Associate Professorial Lecturer at the London School of Economics where he lectures on financial analysis and equity valuation.
Before academia Kenneth was a Managing Director & Head of European Equity Research at Barclays Capital, where he worked for 8 years before leaving in August 2017 to take up a number of academic positions. Prior to this he was also a Managing Director and a ranked accounting and valuation analyst at Citi Investment Research in London. During this time Kenneth published extensively on accounting and valuation topics for investors and was ranked in the top 3 in the Institutional Investor Survey over more than a continuous 10-year period.
He holds a doctorate from Aston Business School, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, a member of the Institute of Taxation and a CFA Charterholder.  He is the co-author of Financial Statement Analysis under IFRS (2018, 6th Ed.) and Company Valuation under IFRS (2020, 3rd ed.).

Al Loehnis

Independent

Al Loehnis is currently a consultant and board adviser, helping agencies and entrepreneurs in the communications space to build reputation and accelerate growth. He has over 20 years experience in IR and corporate communications, with particular expertise in digital. After starting his career as a sell-side analyst at UBS and CSFB, Al left the City in 2000 to become a founding director of Investis, Europe’s leading specialist in digital communications. He subsequently spent five years as a Partner at financial PR agency H/Advisors Maitland. He was a Director of the Investor Relations Society from 2004-13.

Sallie Pilot

Senior Advisor, The Investor Forum

Sallie is an experienced executive director and communications professional with deep expertise in company-investor relations, corporate disclosure and stakeholder engagement. She combines strategic and practical experience with a solid understanding of corporate governance and stewardship, ESG and sustainability, and financial and non-financial reporting.

Currently, Sallie is a senior advisor to The Investor Forum, a not-for-profit, practitioner-led membership organisation, set up by institutional investors in UK Equities focused on positioning stewardship at the heart of investment decision-making. There she leading on an initiative to improve dialogue between Boards and Investors and encourage a more meaningful debate on long term value creation, laying the groundwork for the evolution of the Investor Forum to the Investor and Issuer Forum

She is an Advisory Panel and Stakeholder Insight Group Member of the FRC, Communications Group Member of the Accounting for Sustainability (A4S), and fellow of the Investor Relations Society. Until recently she was an owner and Executive Director of Black Sun plc a Stakeholder Communications Business where she ran a global advisory and research team, of Investor, ESG, Sustainability, and Communications specialists to deliver a more holistic view of corporate performance.

Sue Scholes

Former Chair, IR Society

Sue is a Fellow of the IR Society. She was Chair of the IR Society from 2014 to 2016, during which time the Society launched its Diploma in IR (which she continues to support as an examiner) and its Code of Conduct. She was previously Chair of the Education Committee.

A CIMA-qualified accountant, she first started working in investor relations in the late 1990’s, at GKN plc. She was involved in the demerger of its joint venture businesses and the subsequent listing of Brambles Industries plc in London; as well as the late unwinding of this dual-listed company structure. Most recently, Sue spent seven years as Executive Team member and Director of Communications for AMEC plc, during a period of significant and successful transformation.

Sue is a board member at MAC (the Midlands’ most visited arts centre) and a Trustee and Treasurer of Re-engage (which brings older and younger people together for social gatherings).

Caroline Stockmann

Independent

Sachi Suzuki

Stewardship Director, HSBC Asset Management

Sachi Suzuki is a Stewardship Director at HSBC Asset Management. She oversees its global proxy voting policy and implementation, whilst leading on engagement with companies across various sectors including automotive and energy. She is also a stewardship lead on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and is the co-chair of the 30% Club UK Investor Group. Since 2022, she has been a member of the Oversight Committee for the Best Practice Principles for Shareholder Voting Research and its Nomination and Governance Sub-committee. Prior to joining HSBC, she headed stewardship activities for Japan and a number of other markets during her 11 years at EOS at Federated Hermes. She co-chaired the Asia Investor Group for Climate Change (AIGCC)’s Engagement and Policy Working Group and was an advisory committee member for the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)’s engagement initiatives on sustainable forestry. Before joining EOS, she was a senior research analyst at EIRIS where she was responsible for assessing companies’ ESG performance. Sachi holds a MSc in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London, and BA in Economics from Keio University in Tokyo. She holds CFA Institute’s Investment Management Certificate (IMC).

Peter Swabey FCG

Policy & Research Director, The Chartered Governance Institute

Peter Swabey is Policy & Research Director at The Chartered Governance Institute. He is responsible for developing the profile of the Institute to members, regulators, policymakers, employers and other stakeholders by delivering thought leadership and lobbying campaigns aligned to The Institutes strategy and promoting strong governance as the vital ingredient for success in organisations.

Peter has 30 years’ experience of the share registration industry, gained at Lloyds TSB Registrars and subsequently Equiniti and Equiniti David Venus amongst others. He is a member of the CBI Companies Committee, the QCA Corporate Governance Expert Group and the Shareholder Voting Working Group, as well as being an Alternate Member of the Takeover Panel and a past chairman of the The Chartered Governance Institute Registrars Group.

Jimmy Tillotson

Partner, Redwheel

Jimmy is a Partner at Redwheel and portfolio manager of the Redwheel European Focus Fund. Jimmy has over 20 years of investing experience, having previously been a Director at Hermes working on both the UK and European Focus Funds, before joining Redwheel in 2012. He also served as a director on the Board of portfolio company Opus Group AB from 2018 to 2020. Jimmy holds an MA in Economics from the University of Edinburgh and is a CFA Charterholder.

Steven Young

Professor Of Accounting, Lancaster University Management School