Shattered or Reshaping? Firms in a Fractured Global Order - École Militaire, Paris

A year ago, we asked whether firms were actors or bystanders in a fragmenting world. The conversation has moved on. Trade has not collapsed, but the financial architecture is straining. Industrial policy is back. AI development is pluralizing. Trust in institutions keeps eroding even as companies shoulder more of the social weight that governments once carried. The question is no longer whether the world is fragmenting. It is whether what we are watching is a system breaking apart or a system rearranging itself, and what that distinction means for the firms living through it.

This second edition brings together academics, think tank researchers, business leaders, and policymakers to take stock. Three panels and a keynote from Andrés Velasco, Dean of the LSE School of Public Policy and former Finance Minister of Chile, will examine where global risk now sits, how shattered the world really is once you look past the headlines, and what firms are actually doing about it.

Programme

8:45 – 9:00 

Opening Remarks
Eloïc Peyrache, Dean, HEC Paris

9:05 – 9:50

Panel 1: Global Risks – Where Do We Stand?

An overview of the risks that matter most one year on, drawing on perspectives from strategic studies, global macro, and behavioral science. The panel pairs the geopolitical map with the cognitive one, asking how decision-makers are reading, and misreading, the environment they operate in.
 

Maud Quessard, Senior Research Fellow and Director, Europe, Transatlantic Space, Russia, IRSEM,
Isabelle Mateos y Lago, Group Chief Economist, BNP Paribas,
Anastasia Buyalskaya, Assistant Professor of Marketing, HEC Paris

9:55 – 11:00

Panel 2: A Shattered World, But to What Extent?

Beneath the rhetoric of decoupling, what has actually broken and what has merely bent? International business scholars, economists, and area specialists weigh the evidence on trade, economic security, and the rival blocs taking shape, with a particular focus on Europe's room for maneuver and on Asia.

Michael A. Witt, Professor of International Business and Strategy, King’s Business School, King’s College London,
Eric Mengus, Associate Professor of Economics, HEC Paris,
Elvire Fabry, Director, Trade and Economic Security Programme, Jacques Delors Institute,
Alice Ekman, Senior Analyst, Asia, European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)

11:05 – 11:45

Keynote

Andrés Velasco, Dean, School of Public Policy, London School of Economics; former Minister of Finance, Chile

11:45 – 12:00 - Break

12:05 – 13:15

Panel 3: How Firms Are Responding

From boardroom risk dashboards to capital allocation, how companies are translating geopolitical analysis into operational choices. Strategy and economics scholars meet a finance practitioner to compare what firms say they are doing, what they are actually doing, and where the gap is widest.

Tomasz Michalski, Associate Professor of Economics, HEC Paris,
Madhulika Kaul, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Bayes Business School, City, University of London,
Anna Vlasiuk Nibe, Assistant Professor, University of Southern Denmark,
Aline Gatignon, Associate Professor of Strategy, HEC Paris,
Bertrand Badré, CEO and Founder, Blue like an Orange Sustainable Capital; former Managing Director and CFO, World Bank

Organised by
Olivier Chatain, Professor of Strategy and Business Policy, HEC Paris
Jeremy Ghez, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, HEC Paris
Paul Charon, Director for Influence and Intelligence, IRSEM