The savvy wealth managers who make up much of the CISI membership have an unparalleled menu of opportunities to benefit their clients, their firms and themselves. But they also face some pretty vicious threats
The CISI Annual Conference in London on 1 July 2015, the pinnacle of the Institute’s CPD year, will bring together some of the best and brightest minds in business and finance, and beyond, to paint a clear picture of how The Wealth of Nations is shaping up.
CBI Director General John Cridland will assess British industry’s new-found strengths, and the role of finance in keeping it on the right path. Stephen Cohen, top European strategist at funds giant BlackRock, will be peering into his now-famous ‘looking glass’ – with a bit of help from his firm’s world-leading ‘Aladdin’ analysis system – to see where the world’s central banks’ policies, particularly on interest rates, might lead us.
Verena Ross, CEO of the European Securities Markets Authority, will be over from Paris to give a timely update on ESMA’s path-breaking work on European market regulation.
Dr Jamie Coleman, Managing Director of CodeBase, Britain’s biggest tech start-up hub, and Sacha Romanovitch, who takes over as head of Grant Thornton on the day of the conference – the first woman to be appointed to such a prominent role in a major accounting firm – will be part of a panel looking at how shrewd investors can beat private equity at its own game to make some alpha returns. And with a new government in place, a key question under consideration will be whether the pensions world can expect some stability at last.
Crime – the biggest threat
Professor Barry Rider of Jesus College, Cambridge University, mastermind of the Cambridge International Economic Crime Symposium, the biggest such gathering in the world, will give an overview of the threats to finance from both traditional criminals and the new cyber warriors. He will be joined (from behind a Florida veil) by ‘Bob Mazur’ a seasoned money launderer who spent six years working for one of the Medellin drug cartels (undercover for the US Government). His work has led to long-term jail sentences for the worst financiers in that dirty chain – with many more to follow. And the CISI will be tracking live through the day the terrifying progress of cyber attacks, courtesy of 170 government-sponsored ‘watching stations’ around the globe.
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