Subsidiary Governance Conference 2026

08:30 Registration and exhibition hall open

09:25 Welcome and opening remarks

09:30 Attention Intelligence: The Human Side of Governance 

Alexander will deliver his Attention Intelligence® keynote which is designed to inspire human connection, boost performance and promote a healthy relationship with technology for overall success.

As AI and new technologies accelerate, organisations face a new kind of challenge: how to harness the benefits of technology without losing focus on what matters most, our people.

As we celebrate 150 years since the invention of the telephone, there has never been a more important time to talk about the impact of technology. But success in the next decade isn’t just about technology and efficiency; it’s about human connection, presence and meaning.

In this entertaining keynote, Alexander will blend humour, history and science to explore our relationship with technology and reveal how organisations can reframe the digital narrative from distraction and overwhelm to clarity and connection and rediscover why being human is the greatest skill we have.

Speaker: Alexander Bell

09:50 Evidence‑led outsourcing: Getting the right information and working seamlessly with corporate service providers

As governance teams increasingly rely on outsourced partners for essential functions, from minute taking to entity management and compliance, ensuring those relationships are effective, transparent, and aligned with organisational standards has never been more critical.
This session explores how to establish evidence‑led outsourcing arrangements that genuinely enhance governance outcomes rather than create new risks or blind spots.

Our panel will discuss practical ways to communicate requirements clearly, set expectations where service agreements lack detail, and embed good governance practices across global subsidiary portfolios, including jurisdictions where norms around ESG, data management, or internal controls may differ significantly.

We will also examine how to assess the maturity, ethics, and operational resilience of your service providers, ensuring their policies, systems, and values align with your organisation’s frameworks and risk appetite.

Moderator: Hyun Kyung Kim, Client Development Director, Computershare Entity Solutions

Speakers:

• Farah Darr, Senior Assistant Company Secretary, Dentsu
• Marco Murray, Director, EY
• Natasha Twena, Head of Subsidiary Governance and Operations, Aviva

Sponsored by Computershare

10:30 Strengthening subsidiary oversight through better data and cyber preparedness

As regulatory expectations intensify and organisational structures become increasingly complex, the ability to capture, analyse, and report high‑quality compliance data has never been more essential.

 This session explores how governance teams can build robust data systems that enable timely insights, transparent reporting, and more effective oversight across all subsidiaries.

The panel will also examine cyber governance as a critical component of this framework. With cyber threats evolving at speed, boards must ensure that every subsidiary, regardless of size or location, operates under a clear, aligned, and resilient cyber security policy. We will discuss what 'good' looks like when assessing policy adoption, how to verify implementation, and the importance of equipping subsidiary boards with the skills, training, and response plans needed to manage a cyber attack with confidence.

Moderator:

Justine Blakesley FCG, Founding Partner & CEO, Blakesley Consulting

Speakers:

• April Skipp, Principal Product Compliance Advisor, Diligent
• Natasha Twena, Head of Subsidiary Governance and Operations, Aviva

11:10 Refreshments and Networking

11:40 A choice of breakout sessions

1) Developing and implementing subsidiary governance champions

12:15 A choice of breakout sessions

1) From Group Policy to Subsidiary Practice: Building a CoSec Compliance Framework That Works

For FTSE and large‑cap groups, the challenge isn’t writing the policy but ensuring it is applied consistently across dozens or hundreds of subsidiaries with different regulatory regimes, cultures and board experience levels.

This session explores the practical side of corporate secretarial operations: translating Group strategy into jurisdiction-specific frameworks, aligning calendars and compliance cycles, and ensuring expectations are embedded effectively across subsidiary boards.

The discussion will also cover the realities facing governance teams, including limited bandwidth, board turnover at the subsidiary level, and supporting less experienced directors through effective onboarding and training, helping local boards remain compliant, engaged and accountable.

Our panel will share lessons learned, common challenges and approaches to building compliance frameworks that work in practice.

Moderator: Chris Butler OBE, Head of Operations, Mercator® by Citco

Speakers:
•    Justine Blakesley FCG, Founding Partner & CEO, Blakesley Consulting
Lisa Lischak, General Counsel, Nexora 

Sponsored by Mercator

2) The Governance Gap: What Acquisitions Leave Behind
 
Acquisitions generate a particular kind of momentum: commercial opportunity, strategic fit, expanded footprint. Corporate secretarial rarely features in that conversation, and organisations often come to regret it. Missing board minutes, unsigned resolutions, lapsed filings and gaps in the statutory registers are frequently invisible at the point of acquisition, only to surface later - when a bank requires evidence of corporate authority, or when the people who held that institutional knowledge have already moved on.
 
This session explores how governance professionals can build corporate secretarial oversight into the acquisition process from the outset: through due diligence, responsibility mapping, entity structuring decisions and post-completion integration -  rather than letting it resurface as risk. We will walk through a practical four-phase framework spanning pre-deal to ongoing compliance, and look at how these obligations play out differently across the UK and Ireland.
 
Speakers:
Jacques de Patoul, Director, Corporate Secretarial Services, Ireland
Lauren Geary, Senior Manager, UK Entity Management
Samantha Yu, Senior Manager, UK Entity Management

Sponsored by Law Debenture

12:50 Networking Lunch

13:50 Regulatory update from the CGIUKI

Peter and Valentina will talk through some of the hot topics affecting subsidiary governance, including: 
•    AI
•    ECCTA and filings at Companies House
•    Extended Leave
•    Modernising corporate reporting

Speakers: 

• Peter Swabey FCG, Policy & Research Director, CGIUKI
• Dr. Valentina Dotto, Policy Adviser, CGIUKI

14:15 Movement break

14:20 A choice of breakout session

1) The Accountability Chain: Governing Supply-Chain and Human-Rights Risk

As regulatory expectations and stakeholder scrutiny continue to grow, organisations are facing increasing pressure to demonstrate effective oversight of human-rights risks throughout their global operations and supply chains. For multinational groups, subsidiaries play a pivotal role in identifying, managing and escalating risks ranging from labour exploitation and modern slavery to supplier misconduct, environmental harm and broader ESG concerns.

This session will explore how boards, governance professionals and subsidiary leaders can strengthen governance frameworks to address supply-chain and human-rights risks across complex corporate structures. We will discuss evolving regulatory requirements, the challenges of maintaining consistent oversight across jurisdictions, and practical approaches to due diligence, risk assessment, reporting and remediation.

Moderator: Zoe Bucknell, CEO and Co-Founder, Kuberno

Speaker: Zaneta Sedilekova, Sustainability Risk Lawyer, Director, Planet Law Lab

2) Subsidiary governance meets innovation: Is your current model fit for the future?

As organisations grow in scale and complexity, subsidiary governance functions are being asked to deliver stronger oversight, better insight and greater value to the business - often while managing increasing cost and capacity pressures. At the same time, developments in technology, automation and AI are creating new opportunities to rethink how subsidiary governance is delivered.

In this interactive workshop, PwC will explore what it takes to design a subsidiary governance function that is fit for the future. We will consider how organisations can establish a clear strategy, design an effective global operating model, and use technology, data, automation and AI to enable it.

Through live polling, audience discussion and an interactive governance design challenge, participants will put these principles into practice - making some of the strategic, operating model and investment choices involved in designing a future-fit function, exploring the trade-offs along the way, and considering what may need to change within their own organisations.

Speakers:

• Becky Kittson, Senior Manager, Entity Governance and Compliance, PwC UK
  Conor Roarty, Director, Entity Governance and Compliance, PwC UK
  

Sponsored by PwC

15:00 Movement break

15:05 A choice of breakout sessions

1) How do boards embed CSRD driven sustainability governance across a multinational subsidiary landscape

As the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) reshapes the landscape of non-financial disclosure, directors are facing heightened expectations around how sustainability oversight is embedded across entire corporate groups. This session explores what CSRD means for main boards, particularly those headquartered in the UK with subsidiary operations spanning multiple jurisdictions, many of which may not yet require ESG reporting.

Our speaker will examine how group boards can effectively communicate, embed, and monitor group‑level sustainability strategy across subsidiaries with differing regulatory maturity. We’ll look at practical approaches for engaging local management, ensuring that group‑wide standards are understood and adopted, and creating reporting channels that allow insights, risks, and data to flow both ways, from subsidiary to parent and from parent to subsidiary.
This session will provide pragmatic guidance on aligning governance expectations, managing regulatory divergence, and building reporting ecosystems that support accurate, compliant, and meaningful CSRD disclosures at group level.

This session will look at:

• Why CSRD changes subsidiary governance and what it really means for boards.

• How directors can embed CSRD expectations at board level through clear roles, responsibilities, controls, and escalation pathways.

• Managing divergent ESG standards across jurisdictions and engaging subsidiaries in countries with limited or no ESG requirements.

• Designing effective two‑way reporting flows so subsidiary‑level data supports group disclosures, and group‑level strategy and expectations are communicated consistently back down.

Speaker: Terri Le Couteur FCG, Founder TLC Governance

2) Legal Entity Rationalisation: Simplifying Your Corporate Structure in Practice

Most groups carry more entities than they need. Dormant companies, legacy acquisitions and structures nobody has revisited in years quietly add cost, filing burden and risk. Deciding to simplify is the easy part.  In practice, most programmes stall less over the legal detail and more because of thin internal resource, and momentum lost when expectations weren't aligned from the outset.

This session looks at how legal entity rationalisation actually gets delivered. We will cover how to build the internal case for simplification, run due diligence, set decision criteria for what stays and what goes and use entity management technology to stay on top of the data and the process. We will be honest about what separates a rationalisation that completes from one that quietly drifts. 

Expect a practical, candid session with time for your own questions through live interaction. You will leave with a clear view of where to start, what to watch for, and how to keep a simplified structure simple once you have it.

Speakers:

• Keith Bottomley, Director of Legal Structuring, Governance, M&A, Complete Projects
•  Zoe Bucknell, CEO and Co-Founder, Kuberno

Sponsored by Complete Projects

15:45 Refreshments and networking

16:15 The Simplification Journey: Managing Complexity

Bringing together the key themes, insights and practical considerations explored throughout the day, Kate will lead an interactive workshop designed to apply the learning to real-world scenarios. Delegates will be divided into table groups, with each group assigned a different case study reflecting common challenges and opportunities faced by organisations. Working collaboratively, participants will analyse the facts, identify the key issues, and develop a recommended course of action. The exercise will encourage discussion, debate and the sharing of experiences, enabling delegates to test their understanding, explore different perspectives, and consider the practical implications of their decisions. Each group will then have the opportunity to present its conclusions, fostering wider discussion and allowing the audience to compare approaches and share best practice.

Kate Rosie, Director, Teneo

16:55 Closing remarks

17:00 Drinks reception 

Sponsored by Vistra