EVENTS

SunGard Europa 2008

This was the 7th annual SunGard-wide conference and the theme was Complexity, Compliance & Cost. Conference sessions explored the rising complexity of the world economy and the increased harmonisation of the European and global financial regulatory landscape. The need to ensure customer satisfaction and sustain profitability in the face of these growing pressures mean organisations must continually adapt their strategy and technology to stay ahead of the pack.

In the keynote speech President Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic, presented his experience of embracing change in order to seize new opportunities. Within the Capital Markets and Investment Banking stream a panel discussion followed, providing interesting insights into how some of the established and accepted risk measures and controls are being questioned and reviewed following recent market events.

The Securities Finance stream was designed to update delegates on important organisational changes and product and service developments, as well as to present future strategic development plans for our international securities finance product suite. The majority of sessions were conducted as discussion forums, as we recognise that Europa provides an excellent opportunity for clients to feedback their views and priorities, in order to contribute to our understanding of what is important to the market as a whole. The importance and benefit of regular communication at a strategic level was re-affirmed by both sides, and it was determined that the European Executive Advisory Council would be formed, with founding members from UBS, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, BNP and Nordea. One of the key aims of this group will be to identify any perceived gaps in product or service functionality that could be centrally developed in order to avoid the need for each firm to create their own solution and duplicate effort and cost.