"The removal of borders to international investment and capital raising has created significant opportunities,[while] it has also created new types of risk, which have at times threatened the foundations of international markets. How will it affect you?"

That is the question organizers of the 1997 Conference on Globalization hope to answer April 22-24 in London. Among the scheduled speakers are the heads of IOSCO, the International Society of Securities Administrators, the International Federation of Stock Exchanges and the National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc. (U.S.).

The impetus for the conference is the increasing internationalization of securities markets, which according to the International Financial Exhibitions Limited, "has been facilitated by improvements in technology," and which "has [also] been client driven." Thus, not only do investors "have a global approach in portfolio selection, they are increasingly seeking investment from outside their traditional geographic base."

Hoping to capture this trend, the conference has established the following objectives:

"To provide a single forum for practitioners in the international financial markets to examine those issues which confront them all through the process of globalization; and

To provide an environment which enables delegates to develop solutions in response to these global issues."

Commenting on these objectives, IFex director James Harper said that "practitioners in the international financial markets have asked IFex to arrange the conference to provide a single forum at which the issues surrounding globalization can be examined and solutions developed."

Other senior IFex officials told ISRR that the "single forum was identified from many of the principal players with whom we deal on a regular basis, who are active in both the established and emerging markets."

International Securities Regulation Report, 13 February 1997