Didier Cossin

Didier Cossin works with owners, boards and senior leaders to help them improve performance through best-in-class governance and decision making. He is the Chairman of PNYX Group, which coordinates and manages investments for large asset owners such as sovereign wealth funds using governance principles. He is also the Founder and Director of the IMD Global Board Center and holds the UBS Chair in Banking and Finance at IMD. Professor Cossin is the originator of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness methodology and an advocate of stewardship, the idea that leaders should aim to deliver positive long-term social and economic impact.

He is an expert in the governance of investments, including how Stewardship can be integrated in the investment process all the way through to asset allocations and not only in asset selection and engagement.

Cossin defines governance as the art of decision making at the top of organizations and says better governed investors and corporates outperform their peers because they are better protected against downside risks and more agile and able to profit from upside opportunities. He favours an adaptive and interactive approach to find distinctive solutions for organizations, based on the social, geopolitical, technological and economic transformations in different regions of the world. Cossin has worked as an advisor and executive teacher to supranational organizations (United Nations, European Central Bank, World Bank, IFC, International Olympic Committee) and sovereign wealth funds and state investors (PIF in Saudi Arabia, ADQ in Abu Dhabi, Temasek in Singapore), as well as ministries, central banks, wealthy families and the boards or executive committees of corporations, financial institutions and funds in Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. He also advises non-profit organisations such as the Red Cross or IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) on governance. He is currently Senior Advisor in Governance to UNICEF and to the International Organization for Standardization. 

He is the author of two books on governance: Inspiring Stewardship and High Performance Boards and has published articles in leading journals such as Management Science, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Computational Finance and MIT Sloan Management Review. He is also a columnist for CEOWORLD magazine.

Cossin is President of the Stewardship Institute, whose goal is to support projects with positive social impact through research and advocacy. He is also a member of the American Finance Association, the Eastern Finance Association, and the European Finance Association.

Didier Cossin

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Didier Cossin

Will Farrell

Federated Hermes
Assistant Manager, EOS
London

Will co-leads the climate change theme at EOS, the stewardship arm of Federated Hermes Limited, where his coverage includes companies in Europe and Australia, primarily financial services, energy, chemicals, and materials. Prior to joining EOS, Will worked in the energy and infrastructure investment banking team at Macquarie Capital, where he specialised in renewable energy. Before that, Will held a number of roles across the UK climate policy space, including as a parliamentary researcher for Rt. Hon. Chris Skidmore MP on climate and energy issues, and as a climate and economic policy analyst at a diplomatic institute. He was appointed as a voluntary adviser to Rt. Hon. Alok Sharma MP, President of COP26, on preparations for COP26 after co-founding a Westminster climate policy group in 2019, which engaged MPs and Members of the House of Lords to advocate for more ambition on climate action in public policy. Will has a Bachelor’s degree (1st Class Honours) in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.