This year’s Annual Conference will be held on Thursday 14 November, kindly hosted by Bloomberg LP in their offices at 3 Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4N 4TQ.

Our event will be chaired by Stephanie Flanders, Head of Bloomberg Economics, and will feature a powerhouse lineup of speakers, including:

• Catherine L Mann, External Member, Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England
• Rain Newton-Smith, Chief Executive, CBI
• Vitor Gaspar, Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department, IMF
• Anita Charlesworth, Director of Research, Health Foundation
• Gerard DiPippo, Senior Geo-Economics Analyst, Bloomberg Economics
• Rebecca Harding, Senior Fellow, British Foreign Policy Group
• Henrietta Treyz, Director of Economic Policy, Veda Partners

Registration and a light lunch will start at 12.00pm with the conference starting at 12.50pm. Networking drinks will follow the close of conference.

This conference is FREE to attend for SPE members and tickets will be given on a first-come first-served basis. Non-members wishing to attend can do so if they join the Society, for further info please click here or email us on admin@spe.org.uk.

Programme:

12.00   Registration & light lunch

12.50   Opening Address
             George Buckley, Chair, SPE

12.55   Chair’s Introduction
             Stephanie Flanders, Head of Bloomberg Economics

13.00   Opening Keynote Address: The Great Moderation 20 Years On
             Catherine L Mann, Member, Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England

13.40   Industrial strategy: A driving force for growth across the UK
             A fireside chat with Rain Newton-Smith, CEO, CBI              

14.20   Some basic economics of public debt
             Vitor Gaspar, Director of Fiscal Affairs, IMF

15.00    Tea 

15.25   A healthier nation - what is the outlook for health over the next 20 years,
            and what are the potential economic implications?
            Anita Charlesworth, Director of Research and the REAL Centre
            The Health Foundation

16.05   Panel: The landscape for global risk after the US election
             Gerard DiPippo, Senior Geo-Economics Analyst, Bloomberg Economics
             Rebecca Harding, Senior Fellow, British Foreign Policy Group
             Henrietta Treyz, Director of Economic Policy, Veda Partners

16.50   Chair’s closing remarks and close of conference       

17.00   Post conference drinks

18.00   Close of conference

Meet the Speakers:

George Buckley is Chair of the Society of Professional Economists and Nomura’s Chief European/UK Economist. He has twenty five years of experience as a market economist previously working for Deutsche Bank, London, in a similar role. Prior to that George completed his PhD in the area of housing market economics at Bristol University where he also taught undergraduate courses in macroeconomics.

Stephanie Flanders has been Senior Executive Editor for Economics at Bloomberg News and head of Bloomberg Economics since October 2017. She was previously Chief Market Strategist for Europe at J P Morgan Asset Management in London (2013-17) and BBC Economics Editor (2008-13).  She served in the second Clinton Administration as speech writer and senior advisor to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers (1997-2001).

Catherine L Mann, External member of the Monetary Policy Committee, is a Professor of the Practice at Brandeis University. She contributes to the research program of The Productivity Institute and is a Science Advisor to the European Investment Bank. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Economic Association, among others. Previously she was Chair of the Economic Advisory Committee of the American Bankers Association, a member of the Executive Board of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, on the Board of the National Association for Business Economics, and of the advisory committees of the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Boston, and New York.

Rain Newton-Smith is the CBI’s Chief Executive. Before taking up the role, she was Managing Director, Strategy and Policy, Sustainability and ESG at Barclays. From August 2014 until March 2023, Rain was Chief Economist at the CBI where she led its economic policy, analysis and survey teams and the CBI’s work with HM Treasury. Prior to joining the economics team at the CBI, Rain was Head of Emerging Markets at Oxford Economics, where she was the lead expert on China.

Vitor Gaspar is Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the IMF. He joined in 2014. Before that, he was Portuguese Minister of State and Finance from 2011–13, and has held various positions in European and Portuguese institutions, including head of BEPA at the European Commission, director-general of research at the European Central Bank, director of Economic Studies and Statistics at the Central Bank of Portugal, and Director of Economic Studies at the Portuguese Ministry of Finance.

Anita Charlesworth is the Director of Research and the REAL Centre (Research and Economic Analysis for the Long term) at the Health Foundation, and Honorary Professor in the College of Social Sciences at the Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) at the University of Birmingham. She is a health economist and has a background in government and public policy. Before joining the Health Foundation in May 2014, Anita was Chief Economist at the Nuffield Trust (2010–14). Prior to that she had roles as Chief Analyst and Chief Scientific Advisor at DCMS (2007–10), Director of Public Spending at the Treasury (1998–2007) and worked as an Economic Advisor at the Department of Health and for SmithKline Beecham pharmaceuticals.

Gerard DiPippo is the Senior Geo-Economics Analyst for Bloomberg Economics. He was previously a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and spent 11 years in the U.S. Intelligence Community. He is based in Washington DC.

Rebecca Harding is an independent trade economist, public speaker and digital and sustainable trade and supply chain specialist. Her affiliations include roles as an Associate at Earendel Associates, a Senior Fellow at the British Foreign Policy Group and an Associate Partner in the T3i Partner network. She is the founder of strategic advisory business, Rebeccanomics which convenes the Centre for Economic Security and the Sustainable Trade Forum. In 2022 she was awarded the “Net Zero Entrepreneur of the Year” at the annual Scale Up Group’s Enterprise Awards.

Henrietta Treyz is Managing Parter and Director of Economic Policy at Veda Partners. Henrietta has been providing investors with election and economic policy analysis for over 15 years, leading the Veda macroeconomic policy team through $5T worth of COVID-era stimulus bills, the US-China trade wars, the Great Recession, financial services reform, healthcare reform, and trade policies of multiple administrations. Henrietta’s analysis is derived from legislative, regulatory, and political events nation wide on issues as diverse as federal stimulus and recession response, corporate and individual tax reform, tariffs, taxation of foreign-derived earnings, corporate inversions, the debt ceiling, and other economic and fiscal priorities of Capitol Hill.