Outlook on 2026

Gilles Roth was born on 1 March 1967 in Luxembourg.

After graduating from the Athénée de Luxembourg in 1986, Gilles Roth studied law at the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg and the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium, where he obtained a degree in law. He then completed his university studies in 1991 with a degree in business administration and management from the Institut d’Administration et de Gestion of UCL.

Following the legislative elections of 8 October 2023, Gilles Roth was appointed Minister of Finance on 17 November 2023 in the coalition government formed by the Christian Social Party (CSV) and the Democratic Party (DP).

Gilles Roth was elected municipal councillor in 1993 and became mayor of Mamer in 2000. Gilles Roth joined the Parliament in April 2007 and in 2013 he became Chairman of the CSV political group. Successively re-elected to Parliament, he co-chaired this political group from 2021 until he joined the Government. From 1991 to 1994, Gilles Roth practised as a lawyer, then as Avocat à la Cour at the Luxembourg Bar. In 1995, he became a government attaché at the Ministry of Finance, before being seconded to the Luxembourg Court of Auditors and the Permanent Representation of Luxembourg to the European Union in Brussels. In 1998, he returned to the Ministry of Finance and became government advisor (Conseiller), then senior government advisor (Premier Conseiller de Gouvernement). He also held the position of Government Delegate to the Administrative Jurisdictions until 2007.

Tim Harford is a world-renowned behavioural economist, award-winning Financial Times columnist, data detective and BBC broadcaster. Described as ‘Britain’s Malcolm Gladwell’ (and as ‘a genius at telling stories that illuminate our world’ by Gladwell himself), and by the New Statesman as ‘perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world’, Tim brings storytelling, humour, insight and intelligence to the world of data, work and statistics.

His long-running Radio 4 show and podcast More or Less looks at the truth behind the dubious statistics and manipulated figures making the news, whilst his Cautionary Tales podcast is a journey through stories of human error and its unexpected impact, with guests including Russell Tovey and Alan Cumming. He’s also presented the popular Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy series (and wrote the accompanying books) and, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he hosted How To Vaccinate The World. On television, he wrote and fronted Channel 4’s examination of the nation’s financial challenges in Skint: The Truth Behind Britain’s Broken Economy.

Although he’s a ‘serious’ economist with a career spanning Oxford, Shell and the World Bank, Tim’s FT columns dwell on the economics of daily life and offers tongue-in-cheek solutions to readers’ problems. His first book The Undercover Economist, sold almost two million copies, and built on these themes. It was likened to Freakonomics in its explanation of everything from coffee shops to organised crime to development aid. He’s since gone on to be one of the foremost writers on economics.

Tim’s other titles include: The Logic of Life which applies economic theory to the world to explain how rational (or otherwise) our decisions are; Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure which shows how challenges of all types need to be tackled by learning to improvise and allowing for failure. Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World, considers why tidiness, organisation and predictability aren’t always the best environments to foster innovation and achievement; and How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers, equips readers with the tools to understand and question the numbers that dominate headlines, and sometimes seem to confirm our own biases.

From why we might be misunderstanding the advantages and difficulties of AI (and what the history of technology can tell us about both) to how to identify and challenge misinformation. Why it’s so hard yet so important to learn from mistakes, to how to deal with uncertainty, predict disasters and deal with flawed forecasting, Tim explores a fascinating world of behaviours, numbers and assumptions. Taking in everything from the military to game shows, aviation to ballet, he questions received wisdom, common sense, and statistical certainty. His accessible, easy style provides entertaining, thought-provoking insights relevant to every person and organisation. Tim is a member of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the only journalist to be an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He’s a two-time winner of the Bastiat Prize for economic journalism and has been named Science and Data Commentator of the Year, Economics Commentator of the Year, and has won the Society for Business Economists writing prize and the Royal Statistical Society prize for journalism.

Lize-Mari Barnes joined Swiss Re in South Africa in 2006 and relocated to Luxembourg in 2012. She holds the position as CFO for the Reinsurance Property and Casualty Business Unit as well as Country President Luxembourg for Swiss Re. Previously she held various different CFO positions (of which the last CFO Reinsurance EMEA) as well as General Manager Luxembourg. Before joining Swiss Re in 2006, she worked for PwC in South Africa specialising in Financial Services. Lize-Mari has more than 20 years of experience in Financial services, majority in Reinsurance, both Property & Casualty and Life & Health.

Lize-Mari is a member of the Swiss Re Global Property and Casualty Executive committee, member of the Boards of directors of Swiss Re Europe S.A. and Swiss Re International SE, Chairperson of the Swiss Re Capital Markets Europe S.A Board and also board member of Swiss Re Lux Funds. Lize-Mari is a qualified South African Chartered Accountant.

Judith Bogner is a television presenter, event facilitator and commentator for international finance, business and geopolitics based between the UK and Germany. For more than ten years she was one of the main European anchors of the financial news channel Bloomberg Global Television in London. Since 2012 Judith runs her own business, offering event and business facilitation, client advisory boards and strategic consulting. She is also a UK accredited mediator.

Judith regularly leads public and private events for corporate and institutional clients in the financial sector and beyond. Her list of clients include the Federation of German Industries, the Euro Finance Week (Frankfurt), Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of New York Mellon, The Brewers of Europe, Luxembourg for Finance, the Dutch Development Bank FMO, Ergo Insurance, State Street, Scope Ratings, the Institute of Culinary Art, Allianz Global Assistance, Wacom and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Born in Germany, Judith has lived in Switzerland, China, Ukraine, France and Italy. She is bilingual in English-German and also speaks Italian, French and Mandarin Chinese. Judith holds a degree in International Business Management and Chinese from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen.

With a distinguished career spanning over three decades, Merete Clausen has held key leadership positions within the European Commission, contributing significantly to EU investment and economic policy, and legal affairs. From 2022 onwards, she served as Director for Investment at the Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs (DG GROW), overseeing strategic investment initiatives.

Prior to this, Merete Clausen played a pivotal role in economic and financial policymaking, holding various Head of Unit positions in DG ECFIN, where she managed initiatives focusing on financing for innovation, competitiveness, and collaboration with international financial institutions. Earlier in her career, she was a member of the European Commission’s Legal Service, specialising in budgetary, taxation, and customs matters.

Before joining the European Commission, Merete Clausen built a strong legal foundation as a lawyer-linguist at the European Court of Justice and practiced EU and competition law in a leading law firm in Denmark. She began her legal career as an assistant attorney-at-law at Kammeradvokaten, the Legal Adviser to the Danish Government.

She has a Master’s Degree in Law from the University of Aarhus.

Claude Marx was appointed Director General of the CSSF by the government in February 2016. Claude is also a member of the Board of Supervisors of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

Prior to his nomination as Director General of the CSSF, Claude Marx was the CEO of Lombard International Assurance S.A., the largest unit-linked life insurance company, owned by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities. He was also Chairman of the Board of Lombard Intermediation Services S.A. Claude was with Lombard for 4 years.

Prior to that, Claude worked for HSBC for 17 years, and was Deputy CEO of its Private Banking Division.

At the beginning of his career, Claude worked as a lawyer with a local firm that is now Allen & Overy, as well as Arthur Andersen.

Claude is a lawyer by training, he holds a Master of Laws Degree from the University of Paris and a Master of Laws in International Business Law from the University of London. He was admitted to the Luxembourg bar as Avocat à la Cour in 1990.

Tom Théobald is CEO of Luxembourg for Finance, the Agency for the Development of the Financial Centre.

Previously, he served as Director for the Development of the Financial Centre at the Luxembourg Ministry of Finance. Tom sits on the Advisory Board of the Department of Finance of the University of Luxembourg, is Board member of the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT), and was a member of the Luxembourg Trade & Investment Board, as well as a member of the Management Board of the National Data Exchange Platform (PNED G.I.E.).

Prior to joining the Ministry in March 2019, Tom was Deputy CEO of Luxembourg for Finance from 2014 to 2019. He worked as Adviser at the Luxembourg Bankers’ Association (ABBL), where he was in charge of Communication and Press Relations. He also held the position of Secretary of the ABBL Board of Directors and served as an attaché to the Permanent Mission of Luxembourg to the United Nations in New York.

Tom holds a Doctorate in English Literature from Newcastle University in the UK.