Hywel Ball is EY UK Chair and UK & Ireland Managing Partner. He has over 40 years of experience with EY and has been a Partner for over 30 years.
Hywel is a leading voice on the importance of long-term value creation in business, and co-authored the EY Long-Term Value framework, which is designed to help companies measure and communicate the value they create for all stakeholders. He also led a proof of concept of this framework with the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism and over 30 global participants, including the world’s largest fund managers, in a unique initiative called The Embankment Project for Inclusive Capitalism.
More widely Hywel is passionate about the role that business plays in society. Under his leadership, EY in the UK has led the way in a number of areas, including becoming a founding member of the Change the Race Ratio campaign to accelerate racial diversity in business and going beyond statutory requirements to provide voluntary pay gap reporting on ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and reporting on our social mobility Pay Gap. In addition, EY signed the Green Pensions Charter to ensure that EY pensions are invested sustainably; and entered into a 10-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) so that the majority of the energy EY uses in the UK is zero carbon.
Hywel is a member of HM Treasury’s Professional Services Council and the Corporate Advisory Group of the British Academy’s Future of the Corporation Programme and is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In addition, Hywel is on the audit committee of The British Museum.
Previously Hywel was a lead member of the Auditors’ Advisory Group for Sir Donald Brydon’s independent review into the quality and effectiveness of the UK audit market. He was also on the Advisory Board for the Financial Reporting Council’s work on the Future of Corporate Reporting.
With a broad range of experience, Hywel has worked in EY’s London, New York and Edinburgh offices and served clients in a variety of sectors. He was previously the industry leader for the Energy and Utilities sector for Europe, Middle East, India and Asia and Chairman of the firm in Scotland.
He says: “I am proud to be working with Business in the Community (BITC) and supporting their important work on equity and social mobility. As businesses we all have a responsibility to make a positive impact in society and the network, collaboration and support provided by the BITC is really important to helping us achieve that.”