Didier Cossin

Didier Cossin works with owners, boards and senior leaders to help them improve performance through best-in-class governance and decision making. He is the Founder and Director of the IMD Global Board Center and also holds the UBS Chair in Banking and Finance at IMD. Professor Cossin is the originator of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness methodology and an advocate of stewardship, the idea that leaders should aim to deliver positive long-term social and economic impact.

He is an expert in the governance of investments, including how Stewardship can be integrated in the investment process all the way through to asset allocations and not only in asset selection and engagement.

Cossin defines governance as the art of decision making at the top of organizations and says better governed investors and corporates outperform their peers because they are better protected against downside risks and more agile and able to profit from upside opportunities. He favours an adaptive and interactive approach to find distinctive solutions for organizations, based on the social, geopolitical, technological and economic transformations in different regions of the world.

Cossin has worked as an advisor and executive teacher to supranational organizations (United Nations, European Central Bank, World Bank, IFC, International Olympic Committee) and sovereign wealth funds and state investors (PIF in Saudi Arabia, ADQ in Abu Dhabi, Temasek in Singapore), as well as ministries, central banks, wealthy families and the boards or executive committees of corporations, financial institutions and funds in Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. He also advises non-profit organisations such as the Red Cross or IUCN (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) on governance. He is currently Senior Advisor on Governance to UNICEF and to the International Organization for Standardization.

 

He is the author of books on governance: Inspiring Stewardship and High Performance Boards and has published articles in leading journals such as Management Science, the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Computational Finance and MIT Sloan Management Review. He is also a columnist for CEOWORLD magazine. 

Cossin is President of the Stewardship Institute, whose goal is to support projects with positive social impact through Stewardship research and advocacy, and Chairman of PNYX Group, which manages investment processes for large asset owners using governance principles. He is also a member of the American Finance Association, the Eastern Finance Association, and the European Finance Association.

EDUCATION

PhD (Business Economics) Harvard Business School

MSc, ENS rue d Ulm & Sorbonne University, Paris

Fulbright Scholar, Department of Economics, MIT

RECOGNITION & AWARDS

ECCH Case Award winner

International Business & Economics Research Journal Best Paper Award

ANBAR Citation of Excellence with Highest Quality Rating

Harvard University Derek Bok awards for excellence in teaching