15 years and still growing stronger

Tue, 30/06/2015

Record attendance at NeMa, the custody industry’s main event with UniCredit as a proud sponsor. By Andrea Kárpáti, Head of Secretariat, GSS Hungary            

 

In its 15 years' history, 2015 is the first year that NeMa, the network management conference organised by ICBI, was held in Athens and UniCredit is proud to continue the tradition established in the early days of the conference to once again support as lead sponsor this most important event of the year for the custody, network management and post-trade community. The securities services industry anticipated the event at this new location with an unusual level of excitement and the evening of the first day saw both new and well-known happy faces gathered at the spectacular seaside venue.

This year NeMa celebrated its 15th anniversary and what a successful event it has been - with over 450 attendees representing more than 150 companies from over 40 countries! The organisers from ICBI have again been quite successful in achieving their goal of bringing together the top players from the industry, providing a unique possibility for the record number of attendees gathered in the Greek capital to discuss the various topics attracting their attention in the past year and to work together on a strategy to address the upcoming challenges and opportunities in the custody and post-trade world.

 


Strong UniCredit presence

The team of UniCredit Global Securities Services again dominated the event with its presence, represented not only by location heads but also by members of the Central Team and Senior Management, adding our valuable contribution to the professional dialogue during NeMa.

The event commenced with the Network Risk & Regulation Pre-Conference Summit, where Günter Schnaitt, Head of GSS Austria, spoke of the new challenges for subcustodians in today’s regulatory environment and how agent banks manage their relationships with network managers.

On Day One of the Main Conference the impressive list of speakers giving Keynote Addresses included a prominent spot for Lubomir Mitov, Chief CEE Economist of UniCredit, who deservingly put the CEE region in the spotlight, emphasising the region's sustainable recovery and new opportunities.

The mid-day break was spent in the form of Geo Lunch Working Groups discussing the ongoing developments and the business opportunities in various regions across the world, and Julia Romhanyi, Head of GSS CEE, along with a dozen other panellists, was looking into what's next for Central and Eastern Europe. Pawel Muszalski, Head of Network Management and Product Development, chaired Day Two of the Main Conference.

The event actively engaged the interest of all participants with discussions on the changing faces of network managers, the survival of subcustodians, the new costs of custody and the new fee structure models, and - how could one miss - the eternal topic of T2S.

 

Beautiful night in historical setting

This year as well, the NeMa evening socials were the undeniable highlight of the event. UniCredit and HSBC once again had the pleasure of jointly hosting the main evening reception for all participants of the event - in one of Athen's most impressive buildings, Zappeion, constructed between 1874 and 1888 for the revival of the modern-age Olympic Games.

Located in the National Gardens of Athens, near the foot of the Acropolis, Zappeion was designed by the Danish architect Theophil Hansen, whose other masterpieces include the Austrian Parliament building and Vienna Stock Exchange - a masterful choice to link the reception with last year's NeMa, which took place in Vienna. The opening addresses were made by Clive Triance from HSBC Securities Services and Angelo Rizzuti, Deputy Co-Head of Global Transaction Banking at UniCredit - and then everyone enjoyed an amazing evening of traditional Greek dishes and not so traditional live music.

It was our great pleasure to welcome the post-trade industry for the 15th time to this important event and we look forward to seeing you again, grown in number, next year.