STANDARD Chartered's Third Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan Bankers Conference kicks off today (Sept.17) in Istanbul, Turkey. The two-day conference, titled: “Fragile West, Resilient East”, will address the opportunities, trends and challenges of the banking industry in MENAP. The 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 Bank will be inaugurating the event. His session will be followed by a presentation on the conference theme, “Fragile West, Resilient East” where Marios Maratheftis, Regional Head of Research, MENAP will discuss the economic fundamentals of the East versus the West and the outlook for the region in light of these developments. Tarek Amer, Chairman of 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 & 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, Regional Head of Transaction Banking (Banks Segment), MENA, Standard Chartered, 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 as activities continue to grow and develop into a strategic bilateral relationship and banks are playing a big role in supporting this trend. – SG
