Policy Session : Rethinking Global Finance

Session Format: High-Level Panel Discussion (90 minutes) with Q&A

Date: 24 October 2025 –  14:00- 15:30 CET

Context and Rationale:

The global financial system is at a crossroads. Multiple crises—climate change, geopolitical instability, economic fragmentation, public health shocks, and growing inequality—have exposed vulnerabilities in existing financial architecture. Traditional approaches to global finance often prioritize short-term stability and efficiency but fail to adequately address long-term resilience, sustainability, and inclusivity.

Emerging challenges such as climate adaptation, biodiversity loss, digital transformation, and demographic shifts require unprecedented levels of investment and new financial architectures. Yet developing economies, especially in the Global South, continue to face restricted access to affordable finance, high debt burdens, and structural exclusion from decision-making processes.

This policy session will create space to rethink global finance: how it is governed, how resources are mobilized and allocated, and how financial flows can be aligned with sustainable development, climate goals, and social inclusion.

Objectives

• Critically examinethe shortcomings of the current global financial system in addressing contemporary global challenges.
• Identify pathwaysto reform global financial governance, with attention to equity, representation, and voice for the Global South.
• Explore innovative instruments(e.g., blended finance, nature and brain capital integration, carbon/biodiversity credits, digital financial innovations) to mobilize sustainable investment.
• Build consensusaround actionable recommendations for a more inclusive and resilient global financial architecture.

Agenda

                       Moderator: Prof. Rym Ayadi, Founder and President, EMEA

                       Introduction: Karel Lannoo, Chief Executive Officer at CEPS

                       Panelists:

• Kathleen Tyson, Founder and Chief Executive, Pacemaker.Global
• Ulrich Bindseil, TU Berlin and former Director General Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank (ECB)
• Martin Kessler, Director, Finance for Development Lab, Paris
• Katie Gallogly Swan, UNCTAD (Online)

Prof. Rym Ayadi – EMEA Founder and President, Professor at the Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London, Co-Founder of the Brain Capital Alliance and of the Brain Economy Hub

Professor Rym Ayadi is Founder and President of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association (EMEA), a Barcelona based regional Think Tank that serves as a leading independent and innovative policy research institution. Co-Founder of the Brain Capital Alliance and the Brain Economy Hub, and founder and Director of the Euro-Mediterranean and African Network for Economic Studies (EMANES), Professor at the Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London, and Senior Advisor at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). She served as the Chair of the European Banking Authority (EBA) Banking Stakeholders Group (BSG) of which she acted as elected Chair from February 2019 to July 2024.

Professor Ayadi is an Economist and international academic expert on international business and financial systems, financial markets and institutions, global financial regulation and governance, and socio-economic development and foresight in economies in transition. She is currently Member in several international high- level Academic, Advisory Committees and Editing Boards. For more information, please visit www.rymayadi.com

Karel Lannoo, Chief Executive Officer at CEPS

Karel Lannoo has been Chief Executive of CEPS since 2000, Europe’s leading independent European think tank, ranked among the top ten think tanks in the world. He manages a staff of 70 people.

Karel was an Independent Director of BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españolas), the listed company that manages the Spanish securities markets (2006-18) and is a member of foundation boards and advisory councils.

He has published several books on capital markets, MiFID, and the financial crisis, the most recent of which is The Great Financial Plumbing, From Northern Rock to Banking Union, 2015. He is also the author of many op-eds and articles published by CEPS or in international newspapers and reviews. Karel is a regular speaker in hearings for national and international institutions (the European Commission, European Parliament, etc.) and at international conferences and executive learning courses.

Kathleen Tyson started her career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an Attorney and co-founder of the Settlement Systems Studies Group. She became Assistant Director for International Securities Markets at the UK Securities and Investments Board, supervising Euroclear, Clearstream, Swift and other global infrastructures. She joined Clearstream where she modernised Luxembourg securities laws, co-invented TriParty Repo and Optimised OTC Derivatives Margin, and got US Treasuries into the Luxembourg depository. As an independent consultant she designed CLS Bank foreign exchange settlement operations, helped found NASDAQ Dubai, innovated Swift’s Market Infrastructure Resiliency Service, and with Intellect modernised 12 central banks onto fully Cloud-native, real-time, integrated modular platforms for all central bank operations. In 2023 she published Multicurrency Mercantilism: The New International Monetary Order as a guide to the rapid changes in currency optionality now evident. She plans to be a principal building the new capital markets infrastructure needed to secure stability and risk management for the Multipolar world.

Prof. Ulrich Bindseil, honorary professor at TU Berlin
Ulrich Bindseil is honorary professor at TU Berlin. Until June 2025 he was Director General Market Infrastructure and Payments at the European Central Bank (ECB), a post he has held since November 2019. Previously, he was Director General Market Operations (from May 2012 to October 2019) and head of the Risk Management Division (between 2005 and 2008). He first entered central banking in 1994, when he joined the Economics Department of the Deutsche Bundesbank, having studied economics. His publications include, among others, Monetary Policy Operations and the Financial System, OUP, 2014; Central Banking before 1800 – A Rehabilitation, OUP, 2019; Introduction to Central Banking (with A. Fotia, Springer, 2021), Introduction to Payments and Market Infrastructures (with G. Pantelopoulos, Springer, 2023).

Martin Kessler, Director, Finance for Development Lab, Paris

Martin Kessler is the Executive Director of the Finance for Development Lab. Previously, he worked as an economist in the Development Cooperation Directorate of the OECD, focusing on trends of development finance for developing countries, and debt risks in particular. Prior to this, Martin worked at the World Bank on development dynamics in East Asia, and held research positions at the Brussels-based economic think-tank Bruegel and the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington DC. He published on the financial consequences of trade wars, hyper-globalization and economic convergence, as well as on the internationalization of the RMB. Martin is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School MPA/ID programme and the Paris School of Economics .

Katie Gallogly Swan, UNCTAD

Katie Swan-Nelson works on climate and development strategies at United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Prior to joining the UN, Katie held various positions in academia and civil society, including at Oxfam, ActionAid and Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre. Katie holds degrees from Harvard University and SOAS University of London, where she respectively won the Hoopes Prize for exceptional research and the Development Studies Postgraduate Prize.

Prof. Dr. Martin Stuchtey

Prof. Dr. Martin Stuchtey is a geologist and economist who has dedicated himself to the renewal of the economic system in the sense of a natural capital approach. Together with Dr. Sonja Stuchtey, he is the founder of ‘The Landbanking Group’ – a technology company that makes biodiversity measurable, assessable and investable. He also founded and managed the SYSTEMIQ group of companies. Previously, he worked for McKinsey & Co. for 20 years, where he was responsible for the sustainability division, among other things. He is a professor of resource economics at the University of Innsbruck, author, multiple advisor, father of six children and organic farmer.