Sharon BOWLES (Panelist) chaired the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee from 2009 to 2014, putting her at the heart of the EU’s response to the financial and Eurozone crisis. The committee was responsible for financial services, competition and tax, as well as the suite of economic and monetary policy that includes macroeconomic surveillance and public accountability of the ECB. During her chairmanship sixty legislative measures were completed, including the groundbreaking banking union and strengthened Euro governance as well as complex banking, market conduct and market infrastructure legislation. Ms. Bowles engaged deeply in all the legislative proposals making extensive amendments as well as very actively presiding over more than three hundred ‘trialogue’ negotiations with the Council and Commission that produce the final amended versions of the legislation. She has unique experience as the only person engaged in depth in every negotiation. Under her chairmanship the power and effectiveness of the committee significantly increased. She has an academic and professional background in engineering, physics and mathematics. Before entering the European Parliament in 2005, she was a partner in a firm of European Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys that she founded in 1981. She has acted for a range of leading technology companies in the UK, US and Japan and has extensive experience of commercial negotiation and legal systems on a global basis. Ms. Bowles served as faculty at Session 516, Out of the Shadows: Regulation for the Non-Banking Financial Sector, in 2013.