Michael Mainelli

Gresham College Lecture Series

Professor Mainelli delivered and published a series of 28 free one-hour lectures on commerce at Gresham College in the City of London while serving as Mercers School Memorial Professor of Commerce from 2005 to 2009. The theme of his programme was “Society’s Commercial Choice – Risks and Rewards of Markets”. The lectures emphasised the proper functioning of markets in realising societal goals, and the obligation on society to try to use market forces wherever suitable, as opposed to unnecessary regulation, hidden subsidy or inappropriate taxation. During the public lectures he presented research on valuing sustainable certification and corporate social responsibility using risk/reward options, applying measurement ranges to audit (Confidence Accounting), developing standards markets, liquidity estimation through supply-demand curve prediction, and discerning the role of 'feedforward' in creating leptokurtic market outcomes. During the series he made observations about sustainability, market solutions to social problems, risk, the role of government, the rising paradox of money as a positional good, taxation, long term discount rates, intellectual property managed as an option, corruption, and lotteries as misery indicators. The lecture series concluded by outlining a more general theory of commerce. Professor Mainelli and the saxophonist John Harle interwove a collage from the lecture series with Benjamin Britten's music, "Metamorphoses: The Terrible Beauty of Change", for the City of London Festival's June 2009 Sustain! programme.

Michael continues to lecture and host symposia widely, including continuing lectures at Gresham College, where he has been introducing new concepts of money and the role of government. Commercially, he lectures on a variety of finance, technology, and economic subjects, quite frequently on over two decades of research work on mutual distributed ledgers (a.k.a. blockchains) and 'smart ledgers'.

Wider Initiatives

In 2005 Michael, Z/Yen, Gresham College, the City of London Corporation and forty financial institutions launched Long Finance's, an agreement to share environmental, social and governance research with policy makers and the public. Since 2007 Michael, Gresham College, the City of London Corporation and Z/Yen have used the Long Finance initiative to promote discussion, research and education about finance with the question: "When would we know our financial system is working?" Long Finance holds numerous, free events for the public and over 500 free publications, over 50 produced by Long Finance itself, but the majority donated by over 60 financial firms participating under Long Finance's London Accord. Professor Mainelli champions Long Finance's Confidence Accounting and policy performance bond proposals in particular.

Career

Educated at Harvard College, Trinity College Dublin and the London School of Economics and Political Science, Professor Mainelli’s early scientific research in aerospace and computer graphics led to him starting Swiss companies in seismology, cartography and energy information from 1979 to 1984. After a post at Arthur Andersen from 1985 to 1987, Professor Mainelli spent seven years as a partner and board member of the accountancy firm BDO Binder Hamlyn from 1987 to 1994, now BDO International, directing global consulting projects. While co-founding Z/Yen, Professor Mainelli served as Corporate Development Director of Europe's largest R&D organisation (then the UK Ministry of Defence's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, DERA, now largely QinetiQ and DSTL, the Defence Science & Technology Laboratory) leading to two privatisations. At Z/Yen Professor Mainelli created the Global Financial Centres Index, The London Accord, Long Finance, the Global Intellectual Property Index, the Farsight Award and other financial services initiatives. He conceived and produced the first complete digital map of the world in 1983, Mundocart, the 'Google Earth' equivalent of the 1980s, as well as the $20 million Geodat cartography project from 1980 to 1984.

Professor Mainelli won a 1996 Foresight Challenge award for visualising risk in the Financial Laboratory, a 2003 UK Smart Award for prediction software, and was 2004/2005 British Computer Society “Director of the Year”. He is a qualified accountant (FCCA), computer specialist (FBCS, CITP), securities professional (Chartered FCSI) and management consultant (FIMC, CMC). Professor Mainelli is a non-executive Director of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (the UK’s national body for standards and laboratories) where he is a proponent for competitive standards markets, and two AIM-listed companies, PCGE plc and Wishbone Gold plc. He is a Fellow and Trustee of Gresham College, the founding home of the Royal Society, which he terms "a Tudor Open University", and a former visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Michael was chairman of the Real Time Club in 2009-2010. He was designated a Gentiluomo ("Don") in the Associazione Cavalieri di San Silvestro, in Rome in 2011. In 2013 he was elected Alderman of Broad Street (ward) for the City of London Corporation. In 2015 he was awarded the title of Consigliere del Senato Accademico of L’Accademia Tiberina. He has also held numerous advisory posts, for example City University, Hitachi UK, and HM Treasury.

Writing

Professor Mainelli has published over 50 journal articles, over 200 commercial articles and four books, including the humorous risk/reward management novel, "Clean Business Cuisine: Now and Z/Yen", written with Ian Harris; a Sunday Times Book of the Week in 2000; Accountancy Age described it as “surprisingly funny considering it is written by a couple of accountants”. Professor Mainelli's economics book, "The Price of Fish", also written with Ian Harris, applied his Gresham lecture series ideas to 'wicked problems'. "The Price of Fish" won the 2012 Independent Publishers Gold Award for Finance, Investment and Economics.

Notable Appearances

Wider Interests and Public Service

From 1996 to 2017, Michael Mainelli and his wife Elisabeth undertook the restoration of the Thames Sailing Barge S B Lady Daphne, while he still lectures on, and supports, sailing barges and their history. Aside from other sailing activities, skiing, and being the odd bagpiper at Burns Night dinners, current positions include:

Significant former positions include:

Novels

Non-Fiction

Gresham Lectures

All Articles