Mark Babington

Mark Babington is the Executive Director of Regulatory Standards at the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).

He leads the division responsible for the FRC’s technical and public policy work covering; audit, corporate reporting, sustainability and narrative reporting; corporate governance and stewardship; actuarial and digital reporting and taxonomies.

Since 2022, Mark has been a member of the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) which sets the global Code of Ethics for the accountancy profession, and chairs IESBA’s Sustainability Task Force, tasked with developing revisions to the International Independence Standards. He also represents the FRC on the International Sustainability Standards Board’s Sustainability Standards Advisory Forum.

Mark has previously served as a Board Member and Audit Committee chair to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the UK public body dedicated to supporting democracy around the world.

Prior to joining the FRC’s Executive Committee, Mark led the FRC’s UK Audit Policy programme, to set measures to support greater competition in the UK audit market and work to support the reform of international standard setting for auditors, by global regulatory authorities.

Before he joined the FRC, Mark had a twenty-year career in audit and was a Director at the UK National Audit Office.

Mark Babington

v0726

Mark Babington

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.