Pippa Malmgren was Financial Market Advisor to President GW Bush and Special Assistant to the President on the National Economic Council. She was a member of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, the President’s Working Group on Corporate Governance and the White House Working Group on Terrorism Risks to the Economy.

Later, Malmgren ran strategy for several investment banks and now advises the world’s largest institutional investors about the risks that are hard to quantify: politics, policy and geopolitics. She is also President of the Canonbury Group and Principalis Asset Management, both financial firms based in London.

Malmgren has the ability to astonish audiences with relevant facts and stories by drawing on her extensive personal contacts with key policy makers to provide a more nuanced understanding of global issues. As she says “people love hearing about the ‘inside baseball’ on policy issues”. She always commits to a view and always tailors her talks to the specific interest of the audience, and never uses notes! She draws in all relevant angles: monetary policy, foreign policy, strategic security, commercial facts like the specific level of returns and profit margins.

She also speaks about how there are only two forces in the world economy: the power to generate a profit and the power to tax it. The entrepreneur and the state become increasingly pitted against each other when states are so burdened by debt that they cannot deliver on the promises they have made to their citizens and yet want to tax them more. 2015 saw the launch of her book “SIGNALS: The breakdown of the social contract and the rise of geopolitics”. Described as “essential reading” by Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia for 22 years and “a great read” by John Bruton, former Prime Minister of Ireland. Her book asserts that economic signals are everywhere, from magazine covers to grocery stores to military events. They reveal the story of the world economy. By being alert to signals anyone can start to navigate through the turbulence to the treasures of the world economy instead of being overwhelmed and surprised by it.

Malmgren is on the Legatum Institute Advisory Board at MIT and a regular guest at the BBC on Newsnight, the Today Program, Bloomberg and CNBC.