Speakers
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Justin King CBE, former CEO of Sainsburys
Justin King served as CEO of J Sainsbury for a decade. At the time one of the youngest CEOs in FTSE 100 history, Justin’s time in charge is seen as one of the great success stories of modern British business. He’s now vice-chair of private equity firm Terra Firma overseeing a portfolio that stretches from cinema chains to garden centres.
Justin led Sainsbury’s during huge shifts in the retail and supermarket landscape including diversifying into general merchandise, the rise of online shopping and of discount retailers, the move into smaller, convenience stores, and a cut-throat price war between rivals Tesco and Asda. Sainsbury’s steered a path balancing quality and price and moved quickly into online and convenience shopping.
Guest Speakers
Nabil Dar, Senior Director, Strategic Finance & Pricing
GoCardless
With c.10 years of experience across Finance, Strategy and Corporate Development, Nabil leads GoCardless’ Strategic Finance & Pricing teams. Nabil has been responsible for defining and rolling out the pricing of GoCardless’ core payments and value-added services since 2020. Nabil has also led the company’s last 2 equity funding rounds raising over $400m. Prior to GoCardless, Nabil headed up Strategy and Corporate Development projects at Virgin Media, having spent the initial part of his career in Strategy Consulting, advising Corporates and Private Equity firms on Strategic and Commercial decisions.
Simon-Kucher Leadership
Mark Billige, CEO
Mark Billige is CEO of Simon-Kucher & Partners, elected to lead the consultancy with Andreas von der Gathen in 2019. During his 16-year career with the company, he grew the UK business as Managing Partner and served on the company’s global board. Mark joined Simon-Kucher in 2006 in the firm’s London office. In 2010, he was elected into the partnership and was appointed UK Managing Partner one year later. Mark has gone on to be one of the world’s leading experts in pricing and monetization strategy, advising the CEOs and boards of UK businesses as well as the value creation teams of leading private equity firms. He is a regular commentator in the press and broadcast media on these topics as well as a guest lecturer for MBA programs at the world’s top business schools.
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Simon-Kucher Presenters
Lauren Carter, Senior Director
Lauren is a Senior Director at Simon-Kucher. She has more than 10 years of consulting experience focused on TopLine Growth topics for a range of industry leading corporates and private equity backed companies across the globe. Her project experience includes
go-to-market strategy, customer segmentation, pricing and portfolio optimisation, price architecture, value-selling training and sales optimisation.
Lauren holds a BSc (Hons) in Business Management from King’s College London where she focused on business strategy, marketing, microeconomics and accounting.