Alberto Pastore, SIMA President (Italian Associate of Scholars of Management);
Fabrizio D’Ascezo, Director of Department of Management, Sapienza University of Rome;
Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome;

Keynote speakers:

Alessandro Zattoni, Professor of Strategy, Department of Business and Management, LUISS (The Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali "Guido Carli"), Rome, Italy. Before joining LUISS, he held faculty positions at Bocconi University of Milan and Parthenope University of Naples. He earned a bachelor degree in Business Administration and received a PhD in Business Administration from Bocconi University.

He is co Editor-in-chief of Corporate Governance: An International Review and an Editorial Board Member of Journal of Management Studies and Journal of Management and Governance. He has taught corporate governance in different MBA programs: MBA full time, EMBA and GEMBA.

He has been Director of Strategic and Entrepreneurial Department and Director of the open programme executive division of SDA Bocconi School of Management. He has been Chair of the Strategic Interest Group on corporate governance and Italian representative of European Academy of Management. He received several awards for research (e.g. Best paper award 2008 of CGIR; Best paper award 2008 of Economia & Management; Best paper award 2012 of SDA Bocconi School of Management), teaching (e.g. SDA Bocconi teaching excellence award in master courses in 2004 and 2005; Bocconi University teaching excellence award in Master of Science courses in 2008) and service (SDA Bocconi award for the most innovative project of custom executive education for companies in 2010; Outstanding reviewer award for the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management in 2013 and 2014).
His major interest of research is corporate governance, with a focus on board of directors, governance codes, business groups, ownership structures, and executive compensation. His publications appears in several journals including Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, Corporate Governance: An International Review, Industrial and Corporate Change, British Journal of Management, Journal of Management and Governance.

He served as Board Member for an unlisted company and as Statutory Auditor for a listed company, and he is currently Statutory Auditor of an arts foundation. He is a consultant for large and medium sized companies on corporate governance, strategic positioning and business planning.

Dr Cesario Mateus, Department of Accounting & Finance, Business School, University of Greenwich, London, UK

Dr Mateus joined the University of Greenwich in 2006. He holds a PhD in Finance from Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus, Denmark, an MSc in Finance, and a BSc Hons in Economics. He has received grants and scholarships from the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the American Finance Association and Financial Management Association.

Dr Mateus has written more than 40 academic papers (for the European Journal of Finance, International Review of Financial Analysis, Quarterly Review Economics and Finance, Journal of International Economic Law and other titles) and has presented his research at invited seminars and international conferences in more than 30 countries. His research focuses on:

firms’ financing decisions
valuations
right issues and recently,
portfolio management and evaluation
hedge funds
ETFs’ performance
and spillover effects.

Dr Mateus has been cooperating with several academic journals, including the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Empirical Finance, International Review of Economics and Finance, Journal of Accounting in Emerging Economies, International Journal of Managerial Finance, and National Tax Journal. He has taught as a visiting professor at several universities, including:

Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona);
Cass Business School
University of Southampton
University of Birmingham
Aston Business School (UK)
Catholic University of Lisbon
University of Melbourne (Australia)
Grenoble School of Management (France and Singapore)
and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, (Brazil).

Dr Mateus was also a visiting scholar at the Department of Finance at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, USA (2003); consultant at the Portuguese Stock Exchange Commission research department (2008–09); and Millennium BCP (1992–99).