Our biggest and best event yet, with 550 registrations, our Middle East Treasury Summit at the Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, had a real buzz about it.
With the exhibition hall full, and the greatest number of delegates to date (467), it was not surprising. Of course the content as ever was the thing we pride ourselves on, and our sessions on Islamic banking, cybercrime and leadership (which I was involved in) were all really well-received, as well as keynotes on Islamic banking and an economic update, with a great finale being a look with members of our Middles East Advisory Panel at what the last ten years have been about and what the next ten may bring. Other simultaneous sessions I could not attend received similarly great feedback. You can find the various presentations here.
On the eve of the Summit we held our awards dinner, which was great – albeit a little warm outdoors! Besides some great awards for teams and individuals, the ACT gave special recognition to 10 of our supporting organisations (360T, ADCB, Citi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, ENBD, FAB, HSBC, Kyriba, Swift) for their collaboration over the past 10 years. And then, for the second time only, the John Grout special recognition award was given – to Matthew Hurn for all he has done for the ACT in both the UK and Middle East. A very popular piece of recognition, as Matthew’s LinkedIn post had already attracted 21,400 views in 24 hours!
It has been a great month for celebrations as we also approach our 40 year anniversary in 2019. One very special piece of recognition went to Ria Robinson, our Director of Membership & Governance, who has been with us for 25 years, after first getting to know us as one of our auditors! She was awarded Honorary FCT on Oct 10th. Another very popular award, and I know many of you will want to congratulate Ria if you have not done so already.