Sir Geoffrey Owen
LSE

Sir Geoffrey Owen is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Management, London School of Economics, where he teaches, and also carries out research in the field of corporate strat­egy, corporate governance and international competition.

Sir Geoffrey was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. After serving the Royal Air Force for two years, he joined the Financial Times as a feature writer. He held several posts on that paper, including those of Industrial Correspondent, Industrial Editor, and US Cor­respondent. He has worked as the deputy editor and editor of the Financial Times. During his tenure as the Editor of the FT, he greatly expanded its international coverage and distribution.

Sir Geoffrey then worked as an executive in the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (a govern­ment agency mainly concerned with promoting mergers in British industry) and subsequently as personnel director in the overseas division of the British Leyland Motor Corporation.

He is the author of two books – “Industry in the USA” (Penguin 1967), and “From Empire to Europe: the decline and revival of British industry since the Second World War” (HarperCollins 1999). He has also contributed to a range of business and economic publications, including the Harvard Business Review.

Sir Geoffrey was knighted as a non-executive director of Laird Group plc, a British engineering group.

Session Plans:

SESSION 1: How global competition is altering?

• The structure of industries
• The location of production
• The strategies of firms
• Case Study Discussion - the Automotive Industry, the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industry and the Electronics Industry

SESSION 2: Corporate governance

• Is the world converging on an Anglo-American system of corporate governance?
• How appropriate is such a system for emerging markets such as India?

SESSION 3: Industrial policy

• What can governments do to promote the competitiveness of their industries and firms?
• Lessons from Western Europe, the US, and East Asia