Bruno Allmendinger was until recently CFO and a member of the Executive Committee of Sulzer, a Swiss-listed company which is active in machinery and equipment manufacturing and surface engineering in over 120 locations worldwide. Bruno joined Sulzer in 1971 and has held a range of finance-related roles during his career with the company. Bruno is also a member of the Sanctions Commission of the SWX Swiss Stock Exchange, the Chairman of the Sulzer Pension Funds and head of its investment committee. Bruno stepped down from his executive function on March 1 and retired from his full time position with Sulzer at the end of June 2007.
 

James E. Burton is the former Chief Executive Officer of the London-based World Gold Council (WGC), having retired in December 2008. During the period since joining the WGC in 2002, he implemented a strategy to focus on revitalising the organisation, bringing renewed focus on its mission as the marketing organisation for the gold industry. As well as restructuring the senior management team, he significantly reduced staff overheads, diverting a higher percentage of funding into priority programmes with effective results.

James Burton is the former CEO of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), a position he held from 1994 through to September 2002. As the leading, and largest, public pension system in the USA,  CalPERS has more than $226 billion in assets and 1.6 million participants. During James Burton’s time, the pension system pioneered a more activist approach to institutional investing, emphasising corporate governance issues and insisting on management and board accountability to shareholders.

Prior to working for CalPERS, he was Deputy State Controller for the State of California.

Professor Haspeslagh became Dean of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in May 2008 and he joined full-time in September 2008. He is currently on leave from INSEAD, where he holds the Paul Desmarais Chaired Professorship in Partnership and Active Ownership. Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, founded in 1953, has campuses in Gent, Leuven and St Petersburg, and is the degree granting partner of Peking University’s BiMBA programme. The School is ranked number 10 in Europe by the Financial Times and is accredited by AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS.

Philippe Haspeslagh has a degree of Commercial Engineer of the Catholic University of Leuven (1972), and a postgraduate degree in management from the Vlerick School of Management (1973). He also holds an MBA (1977) and a DBA (1983) from the Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar.

He joined the INSEAD faculty in 1979, where until 2008 he directed the Strategic Issues in Mergers and Acquisitions programme (1980 - ), as well as the International Directors Forum (2002- ). He was a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Business School (1984 - 1985) and at Harvard Business School (1992). During 1996 and 1997 he was on leave of absence as “Directeur de Cabinet” of the Belgian Minister for Agriculture and SMEs. He was also a part time Extra-Ordinary Professor of Management at the University of Ghent, detached to the Vlerick Leuven Ghent Management School until 2007.

His research over the years has covered four areas: Corporate Strategy and the Strategic Process in Diversified Firms, the Management of Mergers and Acquisitions, the Implementation of Value Based Management, and Board Effectiveness. His work on Portfolio Planning and the Management of Diversified Companies received the American Academy of Management 1984 A T Kearney award for outstanding research in general management. His book on “Managing Acquisitions: Creating Value through Corporate Renewal”, (with David Jemison, Free Press/McMillan 1991) received the Academy of Management’s 1993 George R. Terry Award for the most significant contribution to management. His work on the implementation of value-based management was published in the Harvard Business Review July-August 2001 issue (“Managing for Value: It’s Not Just About the Numbers” with Tomo Noda and Fares Boulos). His work on Board effectiveness led to the creation of the International Directors Forum, a peer-based learning process for Chairmen and Non-Executive Directors, and a series of company specific programmes for company Boards.

Professor Haspeslagh has consulted widely on corporate role, strategic planning in diversified firms, acquisition management, and managing for value. He has conducted multiple Board effectiveness programmes and Board reviews. He is the Chairman and co-founder of Dujardin Foods, a European frozen vegetables family firm and a NED of Vandemoortele, a €1 billion Belgian food firm. In the private equity and asset management sphere he is a Director and co-founder of Quest for Growth, a listed technology cross-over fund, Chairman and co-founder of Capricorn Venture Partners, a European VC firm, and a non-executive partner and co-founder of Procuritas, a Scandinavian buyout fund. He was the Academic Director of the European Council on Corporate Strategy of the Conference Board (2000-2007) and was a Board member of INSEAD (1992-1995).

He is Belgian citizen, married to Martine Van den Poel, and has two children.

Dr. Ulrich Köstlin was a member of the Board of Management of Bayer Schering Pharma AG (today: Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals) and Schering AG from 1994 until February 2011. He was responsible for the company’s operative business worldwide.

Ulrich Köstlin was born in Stuttgart, Germany, on December 31, 1952. He studied law at the University of Erlangen and the University of Tübingen in Germany and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He holds a Dr. iur. from Tübingen University and a Master of Laws from University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Dr. Köstlin began his career with Schering AG in 1982 as a management trainee. He served as General Manager for several subsidiaries of Schering AG in Latin America from 1983 to 1986 and was then appointed Head of the Pharma Division for Latin America and Canada. He served as Vice President Marketing and Sales and General Manager Diagnostic Imaging of Berlex Laboratories, Inc., USA, from 1990 to 1993 and as a member of the Pharma Executive Committee of Schering AG from 1993 to 1994.

Dr. Köstlin holds the following positions:
Member of the Supervisory Board of ALBA AG, Berlin
Curator of the H. Turnauer Foundation, Vaduz
Member of the Supervisory Board of the University Hospitals of Würzburg
 

Robert A.G. Monks is the publisher of http://www.ragm.com, which is focused on the assembly and dissemination of information and opinion about global issues of corporate governance. He is also the founder of Lens Governance Advisors, a law firm that advises on corporate governance in the settlement of shareholder litigation and his principal occupation is the development of ideas harmonizing corporate energies with the long-term interests of Global society. He is also the Senior Advisor of Governance for Owners, for both the London and U.S. based share-ownership services venture formed by former Hermes directors Peter Butler and Steve Brown in 2004. Mr. Monks was the Deputy Chairman of Hermes Focus Asset Management in the UK. He also was the founder of Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc., and served as its president from 1985-1990. ISS is now the leading corporate governance consulting firm, advising shareholders with assets in excess of $1 trillion on how to vote their proxies. He founded the investment fund known as LENS, which since 1992 has developed the “institutional activist” mode of investment.
 

Eric Tracey, who has been on the GO Advisory Board since 2006, joined the GO European Focus Fund Investment team in November 2011 as a Consulting Partner, strengthening our engagement function with over 35 years of consulting and corporate experience. In addition to his role at GO, Eric is the Senior Independent Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee at Findel Plc, an independent director and Chairman of the Audit Committee at Burtons Holdings Ltd and NEC Group Ltd. He is also a Council Member of The Stroke Association and a director of Goodenough College. He is also the former Senior Independent Director of Chloride Group, the Finance Director of both Wembley plc and Amey plc, roles that achieved specific shareholder value driven objectives. At Amey plc, he helped the company avoid administration and go on to be sold to Ferrovial. For this he was short-listed for the Accountancy Age Finance Director of the Year award. Prior to this he was a partner at Deloitte & Touche in London for over 24 years. While at Deloitte & Touche he was, amongst other things, leader of the European Energy Infrastructure and Utilities practice and ran one of the audit operating groups