Representatives from White Star Capital, TwentyFour Asset Management, Syntaxis Capital and Odyssey Capital have all been confirmed as among the panellists for the Guernsey Funds Forum 2014.
There are now five weeks to go until the annual event, which this year is titled ‘The pursuit of capital – art or science?’ and takes place on Thursday 1 May at the Grange St Paul’s Hotel in London.
It was announced in February that the keynote speaker will be Jim O’Neill, the former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and creator of the ‘BRICs’ acronym. The event will be moderated by both Sarah Montague, host of BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme, and ITV News anchor Alastair Stewart OBE. It will be the fifth successive year Stewart has moderated the Guernsey Funds Forum.
Now a number of the panellists have been confirmed for the two sessions, where the first will look at how funds are raised and the second will explore how they are allocated.
Panellists for session one will include Eric Martineau-Fortin from White Star Capital, John Magrath from TwentyFour Asset Management, Christophe de Taurines from Capital and Marketing Group and Syntaxis Capital’s Ben Edwards. Session two will include Providence Group’s Antonio Buzaneli, Abid Kazim from Next Energy, Ghalib Chaudhuri of Odyssey Capital, Dr Florence Eid from Arabia Monitor and Nick Money-Kyrle of Steadfast Capital.
Fiona Le Poidevin (pictured), chief executive of Guernsey Finance – the promotional agency for the island’s finance industry, says: “I am very pleased that once again we will be joined by a distinguished set of speakers who will be able to share with us their experience and knowledge of the asset management sector.
“This year our theme is the pursuit of capital and so in the first session we will be taking a look at factors impacting how funds are raised – for example, investor appetite – and in the second, how those funds are being allocated – for example, trending asset classes and geographical markets.
“That all fits very neatly with this year’s keynote address from Jim O’Neill, who of course was the creator of the ‘BRICs’ acronym and this year has been speaking about the ‘MINTs’. Alastair Stewart will be asking him some very pertinent questions, such as ‘why is MINT the flavour of the month?’ and ‘what are the dynamics in the emerging markets which are influencing the choice of short term versus long term investing?’
“I think that this discussion between Jim O’Neill and Alastair Stewart will be extremely thought-provoking and a great conclusion to the day for the 400 or so delegates we expect will attend.”
