Topic: Risk

Chris Lemons

Chris has been a commercial diver and supervisor for over 18 years, and currently specialises in deep sea saturation diving, operating almost exclusively in the oil and gas industry.

This highly specialised form of diving involves living in the claustrophobic confines of a decompression chamber for up to 28 days at a time, commuting daily to the sea-bed in a diving bell, and working at depths of up to 900 feet for 6 hours at a time.

In September of 2012, a freak failure of the dynamic positioning system of the vessel he was working under, resulted in the umbilical which provides him with breathing gas, light and heat being severed completely.  He was left on the seabed, in complete darkness 300 feet below the surface, with only the 5 minutes of breathing gas he carried in the emergency tanks on his back, and no way to protect himself from the freezing temperatures.  

It took his heroic rescuers over 40 minutes to come back and fetch him, and his miraculous survival story has baffled experts ever since.

His extraordinary story was subsequently immortalised in the hit Netflix/BBC documentary 'Last Breath,' a version of which is currently being developed into a Hollywood movie starring Woody Harrelson, Simu Liu and Finn Cole.

Chris was born in Edinburgh, raised in Cambridge, and now lives in the South of France with his partner and two daughters.

Jürgen Stark

Jürgen Stark is one of the most successful economists of his generation who has made his mark on German and European economic policy. As a leading German economist, and a former key member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank. Gaining world-wide recognition for his understanding of economics, Stark has worked with the German Federal Government, the ECB and currently occupies a role within the European Union Economic and Financial Committee.

At the ECB he was responsible for economics and monetary analysis, and was often referred to as the bank’s ‘Chief Economist’, although this was not his official title. Jürgen left the ECB in 2011 because of his fundamental disagreement with the bank’s controversial government bond-buying programme.

From 1978-98 he held senior economic policy positions in the German federal government, and from 1998-2006 he served two consecutive terms as Vice President of Germany’s Bundesbank, acting as President of the Bank in 2004.

Jürgen draws on his extensive experience in the German Ministries of Finance and Economics and at the ECB to speak on the future of the euro, European finance and economics, financial stability and the global economy.

Jürgen Stark’s in depth knowledge and understanding of the economic landscape provides an eye opening insight into the financial situation in Europe. For economists and those interested in the diverse affairs of European geopolitics and economics Stark’s opinion is one of high value.