Richard Howitt, CEO, IIRC

Bio

Howitt was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1961 and was brought up in a single-parent family, living in a council house and attending comprehensive school. He graduated with a Politics, Philosophy, and Economics degree from Oxford in 1982 and holds a postgraduate Diploma in Management Studies from the University of Hertfordshire.

Immediately after graduating, Howitt began working as a councillor on Harlow District Council, and served from 1983 to 1995, including three years as Leader of the council. He led some ground-breaking work assessing local governments’ environmental impact. He was also the Labour Party candidate for Billericay in the 1987 general election.

Then Howitt was elected as MEP to the European Parliament, representing the Essex South constituency. From 1999 until 2016, he served for the East of England constituency.

As a lead MEP for corporate responsibility, he represented the EU worldwide, travelling extensively across Asia, Africa, and the Americas. He has represented European interests in many international initiatives, including the UN Business and Human Rights Forum and the OECD Forum on Responsible Business Conduct. He even helped to negotiate a £22 million European Union fund to help finance UK food banks, but in 2013 the government refused it.

In September 2016, Howitt announced his resignation from the European Parliament to be replaced by Alex Mayer. He then became CEO of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

Alongside this and since his graduation, Howitt worked for four years in the voluntary sector, and spent eight years working for a disability organisation.

Why did he make the power list?

Howitt is number 49 on the Financial Power List 2018. Promoting financial stability and sustainable development through integrated reporting, the IIRC is on a mission for integrated reporting to become the global norm. Howitt will be buoyed by the results of a worldwide consultation on how companies are adopting integrated reporting since the release of the framework in 2013, which showed that companies have accepted the framework and are now in an implementation phase. With more work to be done, Howitt will be looking to further promote the global adoption of integrated reporting ahead of the IIRC Convention this year.

The IIRC

The International Integrated Reporting Council is a global coalition of regulators, investors, companies, standard setters, the accounting profession, and NGOs.

The coalition promotes communication about value creation as the next step in the improvement of corporate reporting.

It aims to establish integrated reporting and thinking within mainstream business practice as the norm in the public and private sectors. It strives to align capital allocation and corporate behaviour to wider goals of financial stability and sustainable development through integrated reporting.

See who made the Financial Power List 2017 and compare this to the Financial Power List 2016.