Jella Benner-Heinacher        Chair

Managing Director of Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz (DSW).

Jella Benner-Heinacher joined DSW in 1991 and was appointed Managing Director in 1994.

 She is primarily responsible for: Euroshareholders in Brussels; Corporate Governance issues in commissions such as Baums- and Cromme-Commission, DSW’s participation in the legislation procedure at a national and international level, Speaking at Annual General Meetings such as SAP, Metro, Henkel and KarstadtQuelle

 She is an attorney having studied in France, Switzerland and the U.S..Jella Benner-Heinacher is also member of the Stock Exchange Board in Düsseldorf and member of the Take-over Committee (at the BaFin) in Frankfurt. Besides she is a member of the supervisory boards of TUI AG, K + S AG, A.S. Creation AG. Jella Benner-Heinacher has been chairing the board of ECGS since 2001.

Dominique Biedermann       

 Dominique Biedermann has been the Executive Director of the Ethos Foundation since 1998 and of Ethos Services since the creation of the company in 2000.

 In 1989, Dominique Biedermann was awarded a doctorate degree in economics by the University of Geneva. His doctoral dissertation described the behaviour of real interest rates in an international environment of flexible exchange rates. In 1991, Dominique Biedermann joined the pension fund of the teachers of the public education system and the civil servants of the Administration of the Canton of Geneva (CIA) as deputy director, and later as executive director from 1994 to 1998. As such, in 1997, he participated in the creation of the Ethos Foundation of which he was the first Chairman until August 1998 and the Managing Director thereafter.

Dominique Biedermann teaches at the Master Unit «Ethics and Political Economy» of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Furthermore, he is regularly invited to give lectures on corporate governance and socially responsible investment, in particular at the University of Geneva and at the Institut für Finanzdienstleistung of Zug (IFZ). He is also a member of the audit committee of Fastenopfer, the Swiss Catholic Lenten Fund, as well as member of the committee for ethics and deontology of the University of Geneva. Dominique Biedermann has been a member of the board of ECGS since 2007.

Pierre-Henri Leroy        

 Pierre-Henri Leroy, is a graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris and of the Paris University Law School, an MBA Graduate from Columbia University in New York, is the founder and president of Proxinvest.

After serving with The French Industrial Development Agency in the United States, he was associated with international chemical groups Hoechst-Roussel-Uclaf in Paris and Frankfurt as International Treasurer from 1976 to 1980, and CdF Chimie, as Finance Director and Treasurer from 1981 to 1985.

In 1985, he joined Bankers Trust as a Vice-President and introduced new financial products in France, such as interest rate swaps, preference floating rate shares, debt to equity swaps. In 1990, he was appointed Director of Funding of Crédit Lyonnais, in charge of managing liabilities, supervising twenty listed affiliates of the banking group and Chairman of Crédit Lyonnais Finance Ltd. (Guernsey).

He resigned from Crédit Lyonnais in 1995 to create Proxinvest. He participated to the 1995 founding session of the ICGN in Washington D.C. Since 2001, he is a member of the French AMF Committee on Individual Investors Protection. He has been a member of the board of directors of ECGS since 2001.

  Gerard Mertens is Professor of Financial Analysis at RSM Erasmus University since 2002 and Founder and Director of Shareholder Support. He received his masters degree in applied economics from Radboud University and holds a PhD in accounting from Maastricht University.

 Before starting Shareholder Support in 2003 he gained experience in the field of corporate finance and banking. In 1999 he joined Van den Boom Groep, the largest Benelux advisory practice on Mergers & Acquisitions, as associate partner, and continued his carreer at NIBC Bank in 2001, where he teamed up with the Corporate Finance division. From 2002 until 2004 he was Director of the NIBC Research Institute.

In 2004 he left his part-time position at NIBC and focused solely on the Shareholder Support activities. Shareholder Support is an independent Dutch corporate governance advisory firm that supports institutional investors in voting and engagement activities, as well as in depth research. Key topics are amongst others: strategy, financial performance, corporate governance and executive remuneration. Shareholder Support serves the largest institutional shareholders in the Netherlands, among which ABP, PGGM and Robeco as well as a number of international investors.

Over the last 10 years Gerard served as advisor to the Dutch government, chaired several committees and participated in several national and international research projects on corporate governance. Since 2007 he is head of the Department of Accounting & Control at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, one of the leading business schools in Europe. He held previous appointments at Nyenrode Business School, Tilburg University and CentER, the Limperg Institute, University of Leuven and Maastricht University.

He has published frequently in national and international journals as well as the financial press. He has co-authored and edited several books on financial accounting, corporate governance and corporate finance. His research interests are corporate governance, executive compensation, financial reporting, and investor relations. He joined the board of ECGS in 2010.