The BETTER FINANCE Scientific Council consists of highly skilled and experienced independent academics who help us deliver high quality research for financial services users, other stakeholders and policy-makers.
The Scientific Council consists of the following members (alphabetic order):
- Prof. Dr. Vilhjálmur Bjarnason (Iceland)
- Prof. Pierre-Henri Conac (Luxembourg)
- Prof. Niamh Moloney (Ireland)
- Mr. Nicolas Véron (USA/EU)
- Prof. Dr. Jan Sebo (Slovakia)
Chair: Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Veil (Germany)
The Scientific Council responds to the need for more independent research in financial services to provide a sound and unbiased basis for financial policy recommendations. This is reflected in BETTER FINANCE’s Scientific Council, as many of its members also have extended experience in EU advisory bodies on financial services policy.
BETTER FINANCE Scientific Council members (as of January 2023)
| Niamh Moloney is Professor of Financial Markets Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She specialises in financial market regulation and financial consumer protection. Niamh Moloney has published a large number of articles in this area, including a book (How to Protect Investors: Lessons from the EU and the UK, Cambridge University Press) on financial consumer protection. She was a member and then Chair of the Central Bank of Ireland’s Consumer Advisory Group; a member of ESMA’s Stakeholder Group; and a member of the UK FCA’s Consumer Panel. Currently, she is also a member of the board of the Central Bank of Ireland.
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| Jan Sebo is associate professor and researcher at the Matej Bel University (Faculty of Economics) in Slovakia, with a specialisation in Pension Finance, Pension Economics, Investing and Savings, Public Finance and Regulatory Policy. He leads the research team at the Orange Envelope platform, which provides automated independent personal finance advise and pension tracking services across all pension schemes in Slovakia. He is a former member of the Occupational Pension Stakeholders Group (OPSG) at EIOPA and a present member of the Financial Services User Group (FSUG) at the European Commission.
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| Vilhjálmur Bjarnason is an assistant professor at the University of Iceland, Faculty of Economics and Business administration/ School of Business, with a specialisation in Finance, Financial markets, and Business Ethics. Vilhjálmur Bjarnason was an elected member of Alþingi the National Parliament of Iceland, for the Southwest Constituency from 2013 until October 2016 and then deputy MP until September 2021. He was a member of the Economic Affairs and Trade Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Icelandic Delegation to the EFTA and EEA Parliamentary Committees, and the EU-Iceland Joint Parliamentary Committee.
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| Pierre-Henri Conac is a Professor of Financial Market Law at the University of Luxembourg where he founded the Master in European Banking and International Financial Law (LL.M.). Pierre-Henri Conac is the author of the Regulation on Securities Markets of the French Commission (COB) and the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). He was involved in policymaking around company law, banking and financial law at the EU level and at the national level. In addition, Pierre-Henri Conac is a former member of the ESMA- Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group (SMSG).
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| Nicolas Véron is a senior fellow at Bruegel in Brussels and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. His research is mostly focused on financial systems and financial reform around the world, including global financial regulatory initiatives and current developments in the European Union. Nicolas Véron has authored and co-authored numerous policy papers on matters that include banking supervision and crisis management, financial reporting, the Eurozone policy framework, and economic nationalism. He participated as an expert in committees of the European Parliament, national parliaments in EU member states, and US Congress. In addition, Nicolas Véron is an independent non-executive board member at the Trade Repository arm of DTCC.
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| Rüdiger Veil holds the Chair for Civil Law and Business Law at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. His main research areas are European corporate law and capital markets law. Rüdiger Veil has published numerous books, inter alia on “European Capital Markets Law”, and articles in top-ranked journals, particularly from a comparative perspective. Since 2012, he has been a member of an academic working group advising the German Federal Ministry of Finance with regard to EU financial market reforms. In addition, Rüdiger Veil has been a member of the ESMA Securities and Markets Stakeholders Group (SMSG); from 2016-2018, he was Chair of the Group. Rüdiger Veil has acted as an expert for the German, European, Chinese and Russian parliament.
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