Opportunities of a Lifetime: Jennings’ lecture full

The Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture is to be delivered on Tuesday 7 April by Renaissance Group founder Stephen Jennings at Te Papa Tongarewa to a sell-out crowd of 450.

Stephen Jennings, a Business Roundtable member, is the founder of the Moscowbased Renaissance Group including Renaissance Capital - the leading investment bank in Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States and sub-Saharan Africa. Born and schooled in Taranaki, he studied business and economics at Massey and Auckland, before joining the New Zealand Treasury. Later he worked with Credit Suisse First Boston before founding Renaissance Capital in Moscow in 1995. Today he is ranked by London’s Financial News as among the top 100 most influential people in European capital markets and has been described by a fellow banker as the only foreign oligarch in Russia.

Mr Jennings’ lecture, Opportunities of a Lifetime: Lessons for New Zealand from New, High-Growth Economies, will focus on the institutions and policies that allow countries to prosper.

Business Roundtable chairman Rob McLeod said the lecture was of particular relevance in the context of the current credit crisis and the new government’s goal of reversing the falling trend in New Zealand’s productivity and economic growth rates and catching up with Australian living standards over the next 15 years.

“The level of interest in the lecture has been exceptional and we are greatly looking forward to hearing Stephen’s insights into why some countries are succeeding and others are failing” said Mr McLeod.

The Sir Ronald Trotter lecture series was inaugurated by the New Zealand Business Roundtable in 1995 to recognise its founding chairman Sir Ronald Trotter’s achievements in business and his many contributions to public affairs in New Zealand. The purpose of the lecture is to feature an outstanding speaker on a major topic of public policy.

Mr Jennings is one of a line-up of outstanding speakers that the Business Roundtable has been able to bring to New Zealand over the years. Among them was Yegor Gaidar, Russia’s first deputy prime minister and minister of finance under Boris Yeltsin. Dr Gaidar is well known to Stephen Jennings and was formerly on the advisory board of Renaissance Capital.

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