“THE last 18 months has been very challenging,” admitted Jason Miyashita, deputy executive director of the Asia Pacific Association for Fiduciary Studies (APAFS), a nonprofit educational association for prudent fund stewardship.

Indeed, the global financial crisis caught a lot of people off guard, fund managers included. This is probably the reason why a lot of finance professionals are all the more looking forward to the 9th Annual Pacific Region Investment Conference (PRIC) to be held on October 8 to 9 at the Renaissance Makati City Hotel Manila. Some 400 delegates are expected to attend the conference which aims to provide current and fundamental understanding of global issues and regional trends from world-class experts.

A number of premier financial institutions and organizations have partnered with APAFS for PRIC, among them the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP), Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX), the Philippine Stock Exchange, and USDA Graduate School.

“This partnership will not only enhance but strengthen our institute’s advocacy in providing professional development, through training and continuing education, to our finance professionals,” said Roberto Borromeo, FINEX president.

According to Miyashita, the conference will tackle the latest trends, discussions, and outlook for specific industries and investments. “We’re looking at alternative investments, a lot of pensions, hedge funds, private equity, and commodities. We try to cover what’s hot.”

Among the speakers scheduled for this year’s conference are:
• Stephen Weiss, senior vice president at Income Research and Management;
• Michael E. Salvay, CFA, managing principal and senior portfolio manager at Payden and Rygel. His talk is entitled “Fixed Income Strategies—What a Wild Ride It’s Been”; and
• Louis Boulanger who will give a talk on “Protection Against the Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown.”

There will also be speakers from the Philippines. Among last year’s conference speakers was Senator Edgardo Angara who spoke on the Personal Equity and Retirement Account (PERA) law.

“We organize the PRIC each year because we foresee that Asia will be the area of growth in the future. We are working to continually equip the region and build its professional accountability as markets mature,” said Daniel Roland, CIMA, executive director of APAFS.