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Boardroom blind spots: are you addressing climate risk? (recording available)
October 19, 2021 @ 8:30 am – 9:30 am BST
This event was organised by ICAEW in collaboration with Chapter Zero during the ICAEW Climate Summit.
Has your board started to prepare for the risks of climate change? Do you have the information you need to make the right decisions? Companies need to embed climate plans into core business strategy. In this interactive Q&A, attendees had the chance to get practical advice for the boardroom on their climate-related questions. Catch up on the questions that were raised and the advice the panel gave.
This session was chaired by Iain Wright, Managing Director, Reputation and Influence at ICAEW, the panel included Julie Baddeley, Chair of the Chapter Zero Board and Alan Stewart, NED and Audit Committee Chair at Diageo plc.
Our speakers
Julie Baddeley, Chair, Chapter Zero
Julie has served on the boards of major organisations in the public and private sectors for more than 20 years. She is Remuneration Committee Chair at Ebiquity plc, Senior Independent Director of Marshall of Cambridge, and was Chair of global recruitment company Harvey Nash plc. She is also Co-Director of the Hughes Hall Centre for Climate Change Engagement, at Cambridge, where she spearheads the work to bring the insights from the University to the non-executive community. Julie is Chair of the Chapter Zero Board, helping its network of non-executive directors to discuss the risks and opportunities of climate change in the boardroom.
Alan Stewart, NED and Audit Committee Chair Diageo plc
Alan qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte in South Africa and moved to the UK in 1985. He started his career in the UK in investment banking with HSBC, where he spent 10 years before moving into the leisure sector as CFO of a private equity backed business which was sold to Thomas Cook in 1998. He became CFO at Thomas Cook Holdings in 1998 and was appointed UK CEO in 2001 having also Chaired Thomas Cook Financial Services. He joined WH Smith as Group CFO in 2005 and in 2008 he was appointed CFO at AWAS, a leading aircraft leasing business, before moving to Marks & Spencer as CFO in 2010. He joined Tesco as CFO in 2014 and retired from there in April 2021. Alan is a NED with Diageo where he has been on the board since 2014 and chairs the Audit Committee. He was a NED and Audit Committee chair of Games Workshop Group from 1996 to 2009 and a NED at Tesco Personal Finance Ltd (Tesco Bank) from 2017 to 2021. Alan was a founder member of the A4S CFO network which he co-chaired for some four years until his retirement and is a member of Chapter Zero.
Iain Wright, Managing Director, Reputation and Influence, ICAEW
Iain Wright joined ICAEW as Director of Corporate and Regional Engagement in June 2018. Iain trained as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte & Touche and worked for the firm until 2003. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool in 2004 and served in this capacity until 2017, until he decided not to seek re-election.