Standard Chartered to hold meet in Istanbul

Standard Chartered will hold its 3rd Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan Bankers Conference in Istanbul from September 17 to 19. The conference will be titled ‘Fragile west, resilient east’ and will address the opportunities, trends and challenges of the banking industry in MENAP region. The two day conference will be attended by more than 80 senior representatives of banks from Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, GCC and Pakistan representing Standard Chartered’s bank clients. Christos Papadopoulos, Regional CEO (MENAP,) Standard Chartered will inaugurate the event. His session will be followed by a presentation on the conference theme, ‘Fragile west, resilient east’ where Marios Maratheftis, regional head (Research- MENAP) will discuss the economic fundamentals of the east vs the west and the outlook for the region in light of these developments. Tarek Amer, chairman, National Bank of Egypt will be discussing the ‘Impact of the Arab Spring on the MENAP Banking Landscape’. In addition, the conference will have a panel discussion titled ‘MENA and global banking landscape – challenges and opportunities’, which will discuss liquidity and re-financing risk, counterparty & sovereign risk, and regulatory environment & costs of funding. There will also be a session on emerging markets opportunities for banks. Motasim Iqbal, Standard Chartered regional head (Transaction Banking - Banks Segment), MENA, said: “Following the success of the conference in the past, we are looking forward to hosting our bank clients in Istanbul. The conference is considered an ideal platform for networking and sharing expertise between Financial Institutions from across the region. It comes at an ideal time when trade and finance activities between the Middle East region and China, India, Korea and South East Asia in general, continues to grow and develop into a strategic bilateral relationship and banks are playing a big role in supporting this trend. With our strong footprint and coverage across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Standard Chartered is ideally positioned to facilitate cross border trade and finance activities across these markets. We are continuously investing in developing our product line and technological platform to bring best international financial services to our clients in the region and across the globe.” From gulf times.