Speaker Biographies

Speakers

Jonathan Faull

Director General, Internal Market & Services, European Commission

Jonathan Faull is Director General of Internal Market and Services at the European Commission in Brussels.

Born in the UK in 1954, he joined the Commission in 1978, after law studies at the University of Sussex and the College of Europe (Bruges). He spent most of his early Commission career in the Directorate General of Competition, working his way up from the starting grade to become Deputy Director General. From 1989 to 1992 he worked in the cabinet (private office) of the competition Commissioner (Leon Brittan). From 1999 to 2003 he was the Commission’s chief press spokesman and Director General of Press and Communication and from 2003 to 2010 he was Director General of Justice and Home Affairs. .

He is the author of many articles on European law and policy, co-editor of a leading work on European Competition Law and Visiting Professor at the Free University of Brussels and the College of Europe (Bruges).

Richard Ward

CEO, Lloyd's

Richard Ward joined Lloyd's as Chief Executive Officer in April 2006. Previously, Richard worked for over ten years at the London-based International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), re-branded ICE Futures, as both Chief Executive Officer and Vice-Chairman.

Prior to the IPE, Richard held a range of senior positions at British Petroleum (BP) and was Head of Marketing & Business Development for energy derivatives worldwide at Tradition Financial Services. Between 1982 and 1988, Richard worked as a Senior Physicist with the Science and Engineering Research Council, leading a number of research and development projects.

Richard Ward has a 1st Class Honours degree in Chemistry, and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Exeter University. He is married with two children and lives in London.

Giles Merritt

President, Forum Europe

Giles Merritt founded Forum Europe in 1989. Merritt’s background is as a journalist and commentator. From 1968-83, he was a staff correspondent of the Financial Times and reported successively from London, Paris, Belfast/Dublin and Brussels. From 1984 to the present day he has contributed columns on EU matters to the Op-Ed pages of the International Herald Tribune and other newspapers, and his articles range widely over political and economic issues.

Merritt is also the founder and Secretary General of Friends of Europe, the most focused of the three main think tanks in Brussels on reaching public opinion across Europe.

Merritt launched Europe’s World, the only Europe-wide policy journal in Autumn 2005 as a European counterpart to the US periodical Foreign Affairs. Europe’s World has no institutional, national or party political bias and is published in partnership with a coalition of over 100 think tanks and universities worldwide, and now has over 100,000 readers in 171 countries.

In addition, Merritt is the co-founder and Director of the Security and Defence Agenda (the SDA), the only think tank in Brussels that concentrates solely on security and defence issues.

Merritt’s work with think tanks began in the mid-1980s, when he devised and chaired a series of Business Policy Seminars on behalf of the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).