Pomerantz to Host First European Corporate Governance Roundtable with Sir Tony Blair

POMERANTZ MONITOR | JULY AUGUST 2023

According to Pomerantz Partner Jennifer Pafiti, it all started in 2015 with an informal conversation among fiduciaries discussing securities litigation and the ways it could benefit their funds. “There were ten of us around a table. It was simply an opportunity to bring together professionals facing similar issues regarding the value of their pension funds and the beneficiaries they owed a duty to.” Iin the years since, that niche discussion has morphed into the Pomerantz Corporate Governance Roundtable, a highly anticipated gathering of decision makers in the worlds of law and institutional investing. Covering everything from ESG to the SEC, past Roundtables have been held in New York and California, with speakers that have included journalist Bob Woodward and former U.S. President Bill Clinton. This year, for the first time ever, the Roundtable will go international, kicking off in Rome in late October with former British Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Sir Tony Blair, slated to give the keynote address.

Given current trends in finance, and Pomerantz’s significant presence in Europe and deep-rooted history, Rome seemed the ideal location for the 2023 Roundtable. European regulators are at the forefront of ESG issues, a major concern to institutional investors, wherever they are situated. Also, global investing in various jurisdictions amidst changing regulations and evolving case law affects the day to day running of large institutional funds. For Pomerantz Director of ESG and UK Client Services, Dr. Daniel Summerfield, the global theme of the Roundtable is about increasing the scope of investor education. He brings up the example of SPACs, a rising trend in U.K. finance that seems to ignore the lessons learned in the U.S. “We want to keep this conference as global as possible,” says Summerfield, “because sometimes you run the risk of looking just within your own market and not looking overseas. That’s why governance has become a global activity – learning from best practice where it exists and learning from mistakes where they have occurred.”

A certain highlight of the roundtable will be the opportunity to hear from the Special Guest Speaker. Both Pafiti and Summerfield enthusiastically described the 2022 Roundtable, when Pomerantz Managing Partner Jeremy Lieberman interviewed former U.S. President Bill Clinton. “It was astonishing, you could hear a pin drop in that room,” recalled Summerfield. Even though politics was not the central subject of the conference, Pafiti found that President Clinton’s experiences during his time in office applied neatly to the world of corporate governance. She recounted Clinton’s discussion of his talks with an adversarial head of state as “laying the grounds for engagement as a tool before you start a war. It’s no different with our pension funds, engagement can be a useful tool in the world of governance before the big guns are brought out!” Summerfield sees the opportunity for similar insights with this year’s guest speaker, former British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair. “They’re very close with one another, and the Blair-Clinton outlook on the world and geopolitics is similar. Their center-left ideology is pretty clear … and investor rights tend to be more associated with that center ground.”

Beyond the Special Guest Speaker, this year’s Roundtable features a host of notable panelists, including professors from Cambridge and the University of Glasgow, prominent investment managers and corporate lawyers, heads of ESG, and top executives from some of the most influential pension funds around the globe. Some of the panel topics will be familiar to attendees of previous Roundtables. This year will feature the return of “Unleash the Lawyers,” a popular session devoted to recent developments in case law and the ways litigation can serve as a tool for recovery as well as corporate engagement.

Other sessions have a more topical bent. There will be panels on the downfall of crypto currency and SPACs, a session on the fall of the Silicon Valley Bank, and a discussion of greenwashing. For Pafiti, this contemporary focus is one of the factors that sets the Pomerantz Roundtable apart from other conferences: “A lot of educational platforms won’t be talking about things that are happening in the moment because there is no conclusion, and the landscape might be changing in real time.” Pomerantz seeks to provide a forum to discuss developing issues as they’re occurring. To support this, the Roundtable has a strict “no press” policy and all conversations are held under Chatham House Rule, meaning any discussion can only be attributed to the group at large, not a specific speaker.

For Pafiti and Summerfield, it is this lively and unencumbered discussion among the participants that lies at the heart of the Roundtable. “From the very first Roundtable, it was important that the concept is led by our attendees and that is a theme we have continued,” explains Pafiti. “It’s peers who are speaking, they’re not only part of the discussion but they are leading it. It is very much guided by the desires of the conference attendees and the topics they want to hear about.” It is easy to see why Pafiti and Summerfield are so excited about participant discussions - the conference brings together CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, General Counsel, Trustees and Heads of ESG for some of the largest pension funds and asset managers across the globe. “We’re bringing together a diverse set of individuals: different backgrounds, different positions, different thoughts, different education, so that we have diversity of thought in the room, but it’s small enough that it’s still an intimate environment,” Pafiti explains. “It’s still a round table, just with a much larger table.”

For additional information or to reserve your place at this year’s event, please email pomerantzRoundtable2023@pomlaw.com.