Refreshments and exhibition opens

Chair’s welcome

Andrew Sawers: Editorial Director, EuroFinance

Preventing financial meltdowns: The undercover view (Keynote speaker)

You may think that there’s nothing financial professionals can learn from a random accident. You’d be wrong. From Three Mile Island and Deepwater Horizon to Lehman Brothers and the LMX spiral, the “Undercover Economist” looks at disasters in finance and industrial processes. What are the common features that make these systems failure-prone and risky? Can accidents in complex systems ever be prevented? And if so – what would it take? The risks you face aren’t always the most obvious ones, and companies can learn from how what you think may be the key risks, aren’t always the ones that come back to bite. Here’s a sideways look at how the next financial crisis can be avoided.

Tim Harford: Author, The Undercover Economist, UK

How crisis can shape the treasury for tomorrow’s risks and opportunities (Case study)

Do you have a view on the risks your company may face in the future? Do you know how to shape organisational structure to be flexible and responsive to risks and opportunities in a timely way? Here are some lessons learned from a treasury which has gone through two crises in recent times: internal and external. This case study will look at treasury’s role in managing risk as well as its ability to fund the corporation during challenging times. The session looks forward to the capabilities that you need to build now to position the organisation for the uncertainties of the future.

Dev S Sanyal: Group Treasurer, BP plc, UK

Refreshment break

The 20/20 risk prognosis: What it takes to derail the global economy (Panel)

We’ve told you how impossible it is to predict the future, but let’s do it anyway. Take a few well-known economists and gurus who have sat through some of the biggest global unpredictables (or nearly unpredictables) in the past 20 years; from the Asian currency crisis, which wiped out global growth, to the US thrift debacle, which bankrupted over 700 financial institutions and cost billions in bailout funds. There was the Mexican debt crisis, the Russian default, the dot com bubble bursting and 9/11. Then came the global financial crisis, considered as cataclysmic as the Great Depression of the 1930s. Meanwhile, a European sovereign debt crisis is raising questions about the future of the euro and revolutions in the Middle East are fostering global political instability. The earth has injected turmoil with some of the most costly catastrophes from Hurricane Katrina to Japan’s quake and tsunami. What and where will be the hot points, the turning points and the meltdowns?

Robin Bew: Editorial Director and Chief Economist, Economist Intelligence Unit, UK

Arnab Das: Managing Director, Roubini Global Economics, UK

Tim Harford: Author, The Undercover Economist, UK

Dr Savvas Savouri: Partner, Chief Investment Officer, Toscafund, UK

Clifford Bennett: Chief Economist, Empire Economics, Australia

Lunch and conference closes