ESG Integration Forum – Europe
Meeting investor expectations

Binary Capital Investment Management. Saftar works closely with all clients on asset allocation, investment portfolio implementation and management as well as on client relationships and business development. He works with all client types: HNW, IFAs/Wealth Managers, family offices and institutions. He manages the multi-asset, multi-fund product range as well as working closely on other investment products, portfolio areas. He leads the investment team. He sits on the board at Binary Capital Investment Management Limited.

Overall Saftar has 25 years institutional, private client investment experience across a broad spectrum of financial services and investment asset classes. He holds an Honours degree in Economics from Strathclyde University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Accountancy from the same institution. He also holds the Investment Management Certificate (IMC) and the CISI Private Client Investment Advice and Management certificate. He has also undertaken a Finance Masterclass from the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School, Executive Education programme and from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investments – FCSI, as well as a member of the CFA Society UK. Saftar is a regular public speaker on finance, investment markets.

Asad is Senior ESG Analyst at HSBC Asset Management. Before this, he was Vice-President EMEA at ISS Corporate Solutions and also spent 12 years working in IR roles for the likes of Nasdaq and PE-backed specialist firms. He started his career with Alenia Marconi Systems, followed by Procter & Gamble and then Ford. Asad has been in the industry since 2004, he has a degree in European Business with Technology from the University of Brighton and a Laurea di Produzione Industriale from Turin Polytechnic, Italy.

Jennifer Anderson is the Co-Head of Sustainable Investment and ESG at Lazard Asset Management. She oversees the firm’s Sustainable Investment & ESG integration strategy. She works closely with analysts and portfolio managers to enhance their investment processes and works on new product development. She co-chairs the firm’s ESG Steering Committee and sits on the firm’s Stewardship and Proxy Voting Committees. She also leads client engagement and thought leadership on ESG topics. She began working in the investment field in 2006. Prior to joining Lazard in 2019, Jennifer was an Investment Manager for TPT Retirement Solutions and during this time she also served on the Board of the Directors of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC). Her previous role was as an Equity Research Analyst in Sustainable Investment at Citigroup Global Capital Markets and she started her career as an SRI Analyst at Jupiter Asset Management. Jennifer has a BA in Economics and Economic History from the University of Leicester and an MSc in Environment Technology from Imperial College London.

Mark Babington is the Acting Executive Director of Regulatory Standards at the Financial Reporting Council. He leads the division responsible for the FRC technical and public policy work covering audit, corporate reporting, corporate governance and stewardship, actuarial and the FRC Lab. The division also includes the all FRC’s Investor and Stakeholder Engagement work. Prior to joining ExCo, Mark led the FRC’s UK Audit Policy programme, 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.

Prior to joining the FRC, Mark had a twenty-year career in audit and was a Director at the UK National Audit Office. Prior to that he was a technical advisor to a number of EU capacity-building programmes. He was also involved in the audit of the United Nations.

For five years, Mark was a member of the UK government’s counter-fraud taskforce. He is a former Chairman of the International Colleges of Auditors of a number of European defence-related organisations. Mark is an Independent Governor, Board Member and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which is the UK public body dedicated to supporting democracy around the world.

Ed graduated from Durham University with a 2:1 BA (Hons) degree in Theology. His thesis was on the Ethics of Genetic Engineering. He began his career in asset management as a Portfolio Manager with Newton Investment Management, before moving to Standard Life following the acquisition of his department. Ed joined Montanaro in 2014 and is Deputy Chairman of the Sustainability Committee. He has been heavily involved in the further integration of ESG in the investment process, culminating in the launch of the Montanaro Better World Fund. Ed directs the impact analysis of companies within the Better World Fund across the Investment Team and writes the award-winning Better World Fund Impact Report, as well as Montanaro’s ESG Handbook and Montanaro’s market commentaries. He is also Deputy Chairman of the Sustainability Committee.

Qualifications

• Durham University, Theology BA (Hons) 2:1
• CFA Institute, Certificate in ESG Investing
• The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment Diploma

Personal
Away from work, Ed is kept busy looking after his young family. An avid reader, Ed likes to relax by working his way through an ever-growing reading list. He is interested in the development of new technologies, particularly “AI” and in his spare time has completed Stanford Professor Andrew Ng’s course ‘AI for Everyone’. When he can, Ed likes to travel, a highlight being a trip across the Middle East to Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Israel in 2005.

Chief Sustainability Officer, Global Head of ESG and Corporate Responsibility

Márcia is Chief Sustainability Officer and founding global head of ESG and corporate responsibility at RELX, a FTSE 15 information, analytics and events company with 33,000+ people and operations in 40 countries.

Engaging colleagues throughout the business, she works to ensure RELX’s extra-financial performance furthers competitive advantage and stakeholder confidence. She drives practice that ensures recognition for RELX as an environment, social and governance (ESG) leader: in 2021, Sustainalytics ranks RELX 1st for in the media and publishing sectors (and 8th overall) among 13,000+ companies; holds a AAA ESG rating with MSCI for fifth consecutive year; came 3rd in sector in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index; and 3rd in the Responsibility 100 Index, a ranking of the FTSE 100 on sustainability.

She is Chair of the UN Global Compact Network UK; Chair of the Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Council of the Conference Board; and a founding member of the Board of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. She is founding director of London museum and educational facility Benjamin Franklin House and previously was special advisor to the American Chamber of Commerce (UK).

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, she holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago, and a PHD in Economic History from the London School of Economics. She is a Member of the British Empire (MBE), an honour awarded by the Queen, and lives in London with her husband and two boys.

Former award-winning journalist Keren Pakes is the VP of Brand Marketing and Communications at Bright Data and the General Manager of The Bright Initiative.

As a former leading BBC News journalist, Keren covered the top news and current affairs stories that characterized that period and led the news, political and social agenda at that time.
After almost 14 years with the BBC, Keren left to pursue marketing senior leadership roles in the technology space; she also volunteered as the spokesperson for various non-profits, helping them advance their valuable goals.

Today, Keren focuses her efforts on expanding the reach and impact of The Bright Initiative, an organization that she initiated and established that uses data to drive change across the globe.

Victor Drozdov is head of business communications and investor relations at Polyus, the Moscow-headquartered mining firm that is also Russia’s largest gold producer.
Before joining Polyus in 2016, he worked in equity sales and sell-side equity research at VTB Capital, and later as part of Severstal’s investor relations team. In 2020 Victor was named Russia’s best IR professional by Institutional Investor.

20 years experience in marketing strategy and sustainability in the paper, industrial markets and 3M consumer business. Romy is an internal sustainability consultant for all 3M businesses and EMEA regions. This involves understanding customer needs for data, sustainability claims, roadmaps and social sustainability and working with manufacturing, product development, packaging development to ensure 3M are ahead of legislation, anticipate trends and work with like minded suppliers, NGOs and government agencies. 3M are looking to be leaders in sustainability with new products, innovative materials and new business models whilst doing business in an transparent and ethical way that supports all stakeholders.

Adrian is a father of two, self confessed sports mad, technology enthusiast with a passion for Environmental conservation.

He combines this unique combination of interests with a passion for using Easy-to-Use technology to enable large organisations do more to improve their impact on the environment, the economy and society in general. Adrian’s background prior to founding Accuvio was in technical architecture with Accenture, and Dell as a Software Development project manager after completing his BSc Degree in Computer Science at UCD.

It was on this career journey that he encountered the challenge of Sustainability reporting across global organisations which lead to his light bulb moment that it needs to be made easier, for such accountability to be “main stream”. He was also involved in the early days of CoderDojo.com, a volunteer-led worldwide charity that teaches children from ages 6 – 14 how to develop software and electronics.

Jonathan Ekin serves as an ESG Offering Manaber at OneTrust ESG – the #1 most widely used privacy, security and trust technology platform. In his role, Jonathan advises companies large and small on EU GDPR, California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Brazil LGPD, and hundreds of the world’s privacy laws, focused on formulating efficient and effective responses to data protection requirements as well as building and scaling privacy programmes.

Joseph (Joe) joined the ISS Corporate Solutions (ICS) team in 2021 after almost 25 years in Banking and Finance. He currently works with UK, Irish and European corporates in a new business and sales capacity to provide platform and advisory solutions to the Governance, Environmental and Social issues of the day. Prior to joining ICS, Joe covered multiple roles including Trading, Operations, Investor Relations, Sales and Project Management across a number of International Tier 1 banks and worked in most markets from Asia to Europe to the Americas and spent several years on assignment in Hong Kong. His speciality was cross border finance and supported companies from Mega Cap conglomerates to private Life Sciences companies raise capital across the financial markets.

Joe holds a Certificate in Investor Relations (CIR) and Securities Institute qualifications.

James Beech joined IR Media Group as Editor in Chief in January 2022. He was a multimedia journalist, editor, client relationship manager, awards host and public speaker at Campden Wealth, for and about the global ultra-wealthy multigenerational family business and office community, in 2016-21.

The Englishman reported and photographed news and features for daily and weekly regional newspapers and websites, in New Zealand and Australia, including the Otago Daily Times and Canterbury-Bankstown Express, in 2006-15.

He wrote and edited market-leading consumer magazines and websites in Bournemouth then worked in public relations and media communications in London, in 1999-2006.

He graduated Bournemouth University with a BA (Hons) in Multimedia Journalism in 1999.

Tim Human is senior reporter at IR Magazine. He rejoined the publication in 2019 after two years working as a freelance writer for a range of international clients. Previously, he was editor of IR Magazine between 2013-2017. He has also written for Corporate Secretary, IR Magazine’s sister publication, and CorpComms, the UK-based magazine for corporate communications professionals.

Steve Wade is a content researcher and conference producer at IR Magazine where he is responsible for crowd-sourcing intelligence on the big global issues facing investor relations. Steve also creates events where the IROs and the wider financial community can discuss, debate and learn about ways to develop the IR function.

Prior to IR Magazine, Steven’s background has been in corporate social responsibility and responsible investment. During his time at Ethical Corporation (now Reuters Events), Steve launched the ESG symposium, an event focused on connecting the socially responsible investment community with corporate sustainability leaders at listed companies. Steve was a judge for the Deloitte Green Frog Awards, celebrating the best corporate reporting in Eastern Europe. Steve also presented research at the Global Sustainable Event Summit in London and has spoken about extra-financial reporting with the United Nations Global Compact, the World Bank and the Polish Ministry of Finance.

Steve has a degree in Event Management and enjoys playing rugby in his spare time.