GCC Financial Forum begins

Manama : The GCC Financial Forum, co-hosted by Euromoney Conferences and the Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) began yesterday at the Four Seasons Hotel, Bahrain. More than 800 leading financial experts, government officials, business leaders and members of the media attended the event from across the region.

David Pritchard, Non-Executive Director of Euromoney Institutional Investor gave the welcome address on behalf of Euromoney. The opening remarks were followed by a keynote interview with  Khalid Al Rumaihi, Chief Executive of the EDB.

The forum audience then heard from two international speakers: Francis Fukuyama, Political Commentator, Futurist and Author, and Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, who provided some global contextualisation to the discussions which followed.

Both keynote speakers also joined the opening panel of the day, alongside Farouk Soussa, Middle East Chief Economist for Citi. The second panel of the morning, which featured Elyas Algaseer, Head of MENA Corporate Banking at The Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, and Hasan Al Jabri, Chief Executive Officer of SEDCO Capital, focused on defining the GCC financing challenge. Panellists discussed how financial institutions can help to drive economic development and corporate growth in the region and addressed the potential for further integration of the GCC financial markets on the global stage.  

Hisham Al Rayes, Group Chief Executive Officer of GFH said: “The Forum provides a great opportunity for the financial community in the GCC to come together for open and honest debate and to tackle the key challenges that we face in the region.”

Day one also featured a ‘town-hall’ interview with Rasheed Al Maraj, Governor, Central Bank of Bahrain.