Professor Michael Mainelli

Chair, Z/Yen Group

KStJ OMRI PhD BA FCCA FCSI(Hon) FBCS

Scientist and economist promoting societal advance through better decisions about technology and economics; former senior partner BDO, director Ministry of Defence research; Lord Mayor of London 2023-2024, Sheriff 2019-2021 with charity interests in the environment, education, and care.

Michael co-founded Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading commercial think-tank, in 1994 to promote societal advance through better finance and technology. Michael’s career summary is a decade of technology research, followed by a decade in finance, then over two decades at Z/Yen combining technology and finance.

Current positions include:

Chair, Z/Yen Group
Chair, United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UK’s national accreditation body for standards and laboratories)
Chair, Ordinary Wisdom
President, London Chamber of Commerce & Industry
Alderman, Broad Street Ward, City of London Corporation

Educated at Harvard, Trinity College Dublin, and the London School of Economics, where he was also a Visiting Professor. His PhD in was in the application of risk/reward methodologies involving chaotic systems. Michael’s early scientific research in aerospace (rocket science) and computer graphics led to him starting Swiss companies in seismology, cartography, and energy information. Michael spent seven years as a senior partner and board member of accountancy firm, BDO Binder Hamlyn directing global consulting projects. In the 1990's Michael served as a Director of Europe’s largest R&D organisation, the Ministry of Defence's Defence Evaluation & Research Agency (DERA), leading to two privatisations. During a spell in merchant banking with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, he co-founded Z/Yen, the City of London’s leading commercial think-tank. Career highlights include:

serving as the 695th Lord Mayor of the City of London 2023-2024 and as Sheriff of the City of London 2019-2021;
creating Z/Yen’s Long Finance, Global Financial Centres Index, Global Green Finance Index, London Accord, Global Intellectual Property Index, Farsight Award and other initiatives;
developing a £100 million business within the UK Ministry of Defence operating as a senior civil servant (grade 3, military 2-star equivalent) commercialising defence technology;
growing an accountancy consultancy, BDO Consulting, profitably to 100 people with global privatisation, finance, technology, government, services, and NGO clients;
conceiving and producing the first complete digital map of the world in 1983, Mundocart, the as well as the $20 million Geodat consortium cartography project (a 1980’s Google Earth);
investment successes, e.g., building Sirius Minerals plc to £450M+ valuation, floating US$160M medical imagery firm, several large UK privatisations, and successful charitable foundation transformations.

A qualified accountant, securities professional, computer specialist and management consultant, Michael’s speciality is enhancing the performance of profit-making, charitable and government organisations and investments in conditions of high uncertainty. Michael has worked in the public sector on strategy, privatisations, and business development; in the private sector in a variety of industries (banking, insurance, manufacturing, media, retail, utilities, television, distribution) on problems ranging from strategy through information systems, quality, human resources, environmental systems and R&D; and in the voluntary sector on a number of assignments to improve performance. For example, Michael has led studies of global investment banks’ operations & IT strategy, worked as Chief Technology Officer for a cancer detection technology firm, built a global website to aid young people’s understanding of financial markets through an innovative game, and helped the UK Cabinet Office Strategy Unit develop sustainable UK fishing policies.

Michael was awarded Commendatore, Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, designated a Gentiluomo of the Associazione Cavalieri di San Silvestro in 2011, won a 1996 UK Foresight Challenge award for the Financial Laboratory, a 2003 UK Smart Award for PropheZy prediction software, was British Computer Society Director of the Year in 2005, made a Fellow of Goodenough College in 2016, and awarded Hons by the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment in 2018. Michael’s biggest honour was the Mercers’ School Memorial Professor of Commerce chair (2005-2009) at Gresham College, founding home of the Royal Society, where he was also Trustee and President. Michael remains Emeritus Professor and Life Fellow of Gresham College. He is a Fellow of King’s College London, Birkbeck, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Goodenough College, Durham Institute of Research, Development, and Invention (DIRDI); a bencher at Middle Temple; Visiting Professor at UCL’s Bartlett School and City St George University.

Michael is a non-executive director of Wishbone Gold Plc, Trustee of Morden College, Trustee of the Lord Mayor's 800th Anniversary Awards Trust, and represents City SMEs and industrial strategy on HM Department of Business & Trade's Professional & Business Services Council. Michael has held numerous advisory posts, for example with Hitachi UK, City University, HM Treasury, and the London Waterways Commission, as well as sitting on editorial boards for the Journal of Strategic Change and Journal of Business Strategy,

Michael has published over 50 journal articles, 250 commercial articles and six books. Michael’s humorous risk/reward management novel, Clean Business Cuisine: Now and Z/Yen, written with Ian Harris, was 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”. Their third co-authored book, The Price of Fish: A New Approach to Wicked Economics and Better Decisions, won the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards Finance, Investment & Economics Gold Prize.

Michael loves skiing, woodcarving, dabbling in languages and racing modern or classic sailboats as a member of the Royal Offshore Racing Club. With his wife, Elisabeth, he restored the 1923 Thames Sailing Barge Lady Daphne from 1996 to 2017 and sits on the world’s oldest sailing racing body, the Thames Match. He speaks English, German, Italian, and French poorly, but much worse Spanish and Chinese, while not sure about Dutch and Flemish. Michael's articles can be read here.

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