Hans Blix (pictured), formerly the UN’s most senior weapons inspector in the lead-up to the Iraq War, and Anat Admati, author and professor at Stanford University, are two of the keynote speakers at the 13th IPE Awards seminar in the Netherlands this November.

Blix, the highly respected professor of international law and former Swedish foreign minister, will discuss recent global security issues and their impact on global financial markets during his keynote in Noordwijk on 21 November.

Admati will be sharing her insights into financial markets regulation in the wake of the crisis, a topic she has written about extensively.

Blix was named director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1981, a position he held until 1997, after spending two decades as part of Sweden’s delegation to the UN General Assembly.

It was following his 16 years at the IAEA, upon being named executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) by UN secretary general Kofi Annan in 2000, that Blix became a household name as a result of his status as the UN’s chief weapons inspector.

After stepping aside as head of UNMOVIC in June 2003 in the wake of the Iraq War, Blix spent five years as chair of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission.

Blix, born in Uppsala, studied at the university of his home town, as well as at Columbia University, and received a PhD in law from Cambridge.

He spent time as a professor of international law before joining the Swedish Foreign Affairs Ministry in 1963, eventually being named under-secretary in 1976 and minister for foreign affairs in 1978.

Admati’s latest book, ‘The Bankers’ New Clothes’, examines the structural problems facing the global banking system and proposes reforms to increase the percentage of equity banks must hold to 30% of the balance sheet.

Co-written by Martin Hellwig, director of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, the book was widely praised, including by then-Bank of England governor Mervyn King.

In addition to Admati’s academic work, she is also a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee.

Admati is currently the George GC Parker professor of finance and economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Completing her undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she went on to complete her masters and doctorate at Yale University.

Register for the IPE European Pension Fund Awards here to hear Dr Blix’s views on global security and the impact on financial markets, and Dr Admati’s latest views on corporate governance and the way forward for the banking industry.

For further information, please contact Yvonne Cooke. 

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