The Net-Zero Conundrum: Overcoming Challenges in Net-Zero Alignment

Nadia Humphreys

Business Manager, Sustainable Regulatory and Finance Solutions

Bloomberg

Nadia’s role is to inform Bloomberg’s sustainable finance business on ESG regulatory requirements for the financial industry in Europe and the UK. She also serves as a co-rapporteur on the European Commission’s Technical Expert Group for Sustainable Finance and a member of the Green Technical Advisory Group for HMT UK. Nadia also supported the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission’s Technical Expert Group for climate related product disclosure and sits on the International Regulatory Strategy Group’s ESG workstream. Nadia was previously the Global Head of Entity Services, supporting regulatory product development for Bloomberg’s Entity Exchange platform. She is a keen advocate for Women in FinTech and sat on Bloomberg’s EMEA Diversity Council. Nadia is also an ICMA mentor and coach under the 10,000 small businesses initiative. Prior to Bloomberg, Nadia worked at both JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, in a number of senior positions. Nadia is on the advisory board of Blockchain & Climate Institute. She holds a Bachelors degree, with honours, in Business from Bath University, a Licentiate in Homeopathy and is a Fellow of the Victoria College of Drama.

Andreas Hoepner

Full Professor of Operational Risk, Banking & Finance and Co-Inventor of EU Paris-Aligned Benchmarks

Professor Andreas G. F. Hoepner, Ph.D., is a Financial Data Scientist working towards the vision of a Conflict-Free Capitalism. While the vision is unlikely fully achievable, Andreas’ view is that anyone can strive to make a regular contribution to reducing abusive conflicts of interests and thereby enhancing the fairness of our society’s financial system. Formally, Andreas is Full Professor of Operational Risk, Banking & Finance at the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School & the Lochlann Quinn School of Business of University College Dublin (UCD), serves on the schools’ management team as Vice Principal for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and is a named supervisor for UCD’s SFI Centre for Research Training in Machine Learning. Prof. Hoepner is serving on the European Union’s Platform on Sustainable Finance (PSF) as one of five independent members (i.e. appointed in personal capacity instead of representing a legal entity) with a focus on data availability and data quality. Prior to PSF, Andreas served as independent member on the Technical Expert Group (TEG) on Sustainable Finance. In his TEG role, he co-invented ‘EU Climate Transition / Paris-Aligned Investing’ by aligning investment strategies across asset classes with the IPCC’s 1.5°C trajectory (with no or limited overshoot). Before joining UCD in June 2017, Andreas was Associate Professor of Finance at the ICMA Centre of Henley Business School (2013-17), where he remains a Visiting Professor of Finance. He is also Visiting Professor in Financial Data Science at the University of Hamburg, serves as a board member of the Financial Data Science Association (having been its inaugural chair in 2015-16) and educates investment professionals as Scientific Co-Director of the Chartered Financial Data Scientist (CFDS) and the Certificate in Sustainable Investing and Finance (CSIF) of the German Investment Association (DVFA). He is currently serving on independent advisory/assessment committees for various entities including BJSS, www.ClimateDisclosure100.info, the female-led fintech start-up Datamaran, the Deep Data Delivery Standards (www.DeepData.ai), Finance Map, the French Social Investment Forum (FIR), IPE Awards (Categories: Climate Change Risk, ESG, Smart Beta), and Kempen (with emphasis on boutique SDG investing). Andreas received his PhD from St. Andrews in June 2010, where he was on faculty (2009-13). He co-founder and chair of two socially motivated enterprises: ReFine Research Project which gives social reporting awards to pension funds and Sociovestix Labs (SVL). Cofounded with Prof. Borth, Dr. Hees and Dr. Rezec as a spin-off from the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence [DFKI]), SVL is committed to fostering innovations in support of the Sustainable Development Principles while adhering to the Asilomar AI Principles. Prof. Hoepner also leads on data science for the ‘Cyber Readiness for Boards’ project funded by the UK National Cyber Security Centre (2019-20), advised the EU’s Joint Research Centre on the EU Ecolabel (2019-20), served from 2009 to 2016 as lead academic advisor to the United Nations supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and consulted for organisations such as CFA, CISL, EIB, Mistra or the World Bank. Andreas is the sole inventor of a US patent titled ‘Investment Performance Measurement’ (No. US8751357 B1). He also won several awards including a 2019 (with Oikonomou, Sautner, Starks & Zhou), 2015 (with Adamsson) and 2010 PRI Best Paper Awards. Andreas publishes interdisciplinary in journals such as Accounting, Auditing & Accountability; Brain & Behavior; Ecological Economics; Environmental and Resource Economics; European Journal of Finance; Journal of Business Ethics; Journal of Business Finance & Accounting; Journal of Economic Geography; Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money or Research Policy. He is co-editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty, co-organises knowledge transfer conferences such as Promoting Sustainable Finance at the European Commission or the EU Science Hub Summer Schools on Sustainable Finance (1st / 2nd) and co-edits special issues of academic journals on Econometrics & Financial Data Science (1st / 2nd / 3rd), GHG reporting and the EU’s Green Taxonomy. More generally, Prof. Hoepner’s research earned him, aged 33, an invitation to serve as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015 for 'exceptional contributions to the study of finance, particularly ...responsible investment'. Aged 37, he was the to date youngest recipient of the Irish Sustainable Finance Person of the Year Award. Andreas is most proud, however, about his record as Ph.D. and post-doc supervisor with more than ten students having successfully graduated into roles at Fidelity, ICMA Centre, MSCI, or the Universities of Belfast, Cardiff, Hamburg and Oxford. Besides these academic honours, Prof. Hoepner’s research and views have been covered in international media (TV, Radio & Print) including BBC (World Business Report, Business Live, Radio 4 today programme, Radio 5 Live, South Live), Bloomberg, Financial Times, New York Times, CNN, Guardian, Reuters, IPE, P&I and Canadian, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Indian & Swedish media. He has also presented his research to key academic audiences (e.g. AFA, EFA, FDSA), relevant asset owners (e.g. AP 1/2/3/4/6/7, APG, AQR, BPP, BVK, CDC, Church of England, DBU, EAPSPI, Elo, GPIF, IAPF, IFC, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Lothian, MP, NBIM, NIB, OTPP, Pension Denmark, PGGM, PKA, Unisuper, USS, World Bank Pension Fund), regulatory bodies (e.g. Bundesbank, Central Bank of Ireland, CSRC, EBA, EIOPA, European Commission, FCA, IOSCO, SEAI, UBA) and data science specialists (e.g. Bloomberg, FTSE, Google, ISS, MSCI). Selected content of Prof. Hoepner has been translated into Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Russian. An extensive record of Prof. Hoepner’s publications, roles, and outreach activities can be found on his CV, which also discloses the ISINs of his personal investments to practise full transparency around any potential conflicts of interest. In professional roles, Prof. Hoepner believes that traceable signals make wonderful decisions. Hence, he commits to efficiently executing exclusively effective engagements. When interpreting academic behaviour, Andreas follows the credo: evidence is discovered, theories are promoted.

Erik Oscar Rotander

Head of Index Sales and Relationship Management, EMEA

Bloomberg L.P.

Erik Rotander is managing Bloomberg's index sales and relationship management team in EMEA. He has 20 years experience of working with financial indices and index based investment solutions across asset classes and client types. Before joining Bloomberg he held various leadership roles on both the sell- and buyside. Erik earned his LLM from University of Uppsala and studied business and finance at University of British Columbia and KU Leuven and is a FRM and CAIA charterholder.

David Mendez Vives

Senior Quantitative Analyst, Index Product EMEA

Bloomberg L.P.

David is a Senior Quantitative Analyst at Bloomberg, specialising in Fixed Income index research. He has done extensive work on the application of ESG to Corporate Bond indices (both IG and HY), and on smart beta in bond space. His current research is focused on ESG for Sovereigns, both building the scores and the corresponding ESG Treasury bond indices. David holds a PhD in Economics by the LSE and has worked in Fixed Income Research in a number of investment banks, including Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale.

Chris Hackel

Head of Sustainable Indices

Bloomberg

Based in New York, Chris Hackel is the Head of Sustainable Indices Bloomberg.

Chris oversees the strategy and development of ESG, climate, and other sustainable-themed benchmarks. He has over a decade of experience working with investors to incorporate sustainable investment themes in indices, portfolios, and products.

Chris’ prior experience includes the development and implementation of automated strategies at a high-volume equity hedge fund, structuring CMOs on a Fixed Income trading desk, and developing trading tools as part of a Fixed Income Quantitative Research group. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Syracuse University.