South-East Europe Banking Conference 2008

Tuesday, June 24th 2008, Athenaeum InterContinental 

Conference Programme

(Last update : June 23th, 2008)

The logic behind broader liquidity provision is simple: to break a vicious circle of fear and forced selling. In recent days, many corners of the credit markets were becoming dysfunctional, with investors refusing to hold all but the safest government bonds. Spreads in normally safe and liquid markets, such as bonds issued by the quasi-official mortgage giants, F. Mae and Fr. Mac, widened alarmingly and prices wobbled. Higher volatility and wider spreads prompt banks to demand more collateral from borrowers, which in turn exacerbates the mess. By offering the safe Treasury bonds that investors crave, and holding unwanted securities in return, the Fed intends to block this spiral. Meanwhile, we must wait and see how the Russians and the Chinese will utilize their savings.

Moderator: Athanasios Papandropoulos, Honorary President of the Association of European Journalists

·         Ian Byrne, Product Management, Corporate & Goverment Ratings, Standard & Poor's

·         Dimitris Lefakis, Chief Risk Officer, NBG

·         Barry Moore, Journalist, Brussels Financial Information Agency

·         Domenico Vinci, Executive Director, Global Investment Research, Goldman Sachs

Hosted by Goldman Sachs

·         Dominique Jooris, Managing Director, Co-Head of European Financial              Institutions Dept Capital Markets Group, Goldman Sachs

·         Simone Verri, Managing Director, Co-Head of European FIG Financing & Risk Management, Goldman Sachs

·         Artur Tomala, Executive Director, Hybrid Capital Products Group, Goldman Sachs

·         Julian Wills, Executive Director, Bank Risk Management Team, Goldman Sachs

Risk management is one of the biggest problems for banks internationally. The Conference will focus on Internet security, fraud prevention, credit security and money laundering.

Very much has been written on this topic in order to devise mechanisms at the institutional level to monitor and deter the use of financial intermediates in the recycling of illegal profits. In our view, however, there are yet two research directions which should be explored with the aid of economic theory.

The first is the credibility of the international agreements stipulated in order to increase the monitoring of transactions in financial markets. From this point of view, many economists are rather skeptical about the possibility of giving sufficient incentives to less developed countries or to fiscal heavens to implement such agreements. Moreover, the list of countries competing to attract financial capital is almost endless, given the great mobility of capital in financial markets, and such countries are also those in which those markets are almost completely out of the control of even the domestic monetary authorities. Due to the difficulties entailed in devising and implementing effective sanctions against the governments of the countries involved in large-scale money laundering, some economists have suggested shifting the target of the deterrence policies more closely on to the financial institutions involved in such activities.

The second is the problem behind these schemes: creating a conflict of interests between financial institutions and their clients involved in illegal transactions. To achieve this objective, the most frequently proposed institutional reform is to shift part of the penalties for crimes related to money laundering from the clients to the financial institutions.

Moderator: Dimitris Kontogiannis, Journalist, Eleytherotypia newspaper:

·         Panagiotis Kyriakopoulos, Director of the Dept for the Supervision of Credit and Financial Institutions, Bank of Greece

·         Stilpon Nestor, Managing Partner, Nestor Advisors

·         Spyros Goumas, Group Regulatory Compliance, NBG

Hosted by: National Bank of Greece

·         Agis Leopoulos, Head of International, NBG

·         Marinos Vathis, Structured & International Finance, NBG

·         Konstantina Vitoratou, Director of International Retail Banking, NBG

Will the global credit crunch and the slowdown of SE Europe economies drive bank valuations down, enabling Greek banks to continue their shopping spree, or should they focus on building scale in the local market?

Moderator: Theodoros Polydoros, Management Consultant, Greece

·         Kyriacos Sabatakakis, Chairman & CEO, Accenture

·         Agis Leopoulos, Head of International, NBG  

·         Dimitris Paraskevas, Managing Partner, Elias Paraskevas Attorneys 1933

Keynote Address: Panos Halkias, Group Commercial Director, Printec Group of Companies

Much work has already been done to re-establish and then improve regional contacts. The EU-led Stability Pact for SE Europe has since 1999 successfully coordinated regional cross-border cooperation. For the first time since the breakdown of Balkan states to prepare for accession has been piecemeal. And its lengthy internal crisis over the proposed constitution also damaged its reputation in the Balkans. Let us hope that the Reform Treaty, given its blessing by European Union leaders in Lisbon last December, will help to reassure the critics and pave the way for a new -and more robust- phase of Balkans integration.

The South-East European Cooperation Process is the first genuine policy forum of the wider Balkans region, where countries from the region, both EU members and candidates, participate. This is one of the relatively new regional organizations that undoubtedly contribute to preparatory work in the candidate and potential candidate countries of the Western Balkans. But they must not be seen as substitutes for the far more comprehensive accession process.

Moderator: Andreas Anastasiou, Editor-in-Chief, Hrima Magazine

·         Panos Halkias, Group Commercial Director, Printec Group of Companies

·         John Olympios, Managing Director, V+O Communication

·         Istvan Lengyel, General Secretary, Banking Association for Central & 

      Eastern Europe

·         Agis Leopoulos, Head of International, NBG

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