Corporate Financial Executive Roundtable

Agenda

The Corporate Financial Executive Roundtable has been carefully crafted by our Governing Body of CFOs to deliver the most timely and relevant information in a true peer-to-peer environment. Based on criteria developed by the Governing Body, speakers are invited following a highly selective nomination and qualification process. The Governing Body's goal is to ensure that the conference delivers valuable and useful information to all CFOs and finance executives who qualify to attend.

The full program will be available soon. Please download the the preliminary program

Day One - Sunday, September 13th
6:00pm	Pre-Registration
6:30pm	Departure for Reception & Dinner Hosted by Fidelity Investments at Anderson House
Day Two - Monday, September 14th
7:00 - 8:00am	Registration & Continental Breakfast
8:00 - 9:00am	A Marathon, Not a Sprint: The Outlook for the Obama Administration’s Economic and Financial Policy In its first 100 days, the Obama Administration passed an $800 billion stimulus package and intervened to rescue financial institutions and two of the big three US-headquartered auto makers. Now the Obama White House and the Democratic majority in Congress is embroiled in a titantic struggle to restructure the American health care system. As that fight ends, Democrats and Republicans will turn their attention to the 2010 elections. So what will happen to the other aspects of the Obama agenda: tax policy, financial regulation, climate change, trade, economic stimulus and the future of TARP, TALF and PPIP? Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, director of domestic and economic policy for the 2008 McCain presidential campaign and a member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, will give us an overview of how the Obama administration will run what promises to be a very long policy race.
9:00 - 10:00am	What Reform May Bring and Innovative Health Care Strategies to Manage Costs President Obama has promised to restructure the nation’s healthcare financing system as one of his administration’s top priorities, and has staked a enormous amount of political capital on achieving this goal, despite misgivings in the business community about the affordability of a such an initiative now, at the same time that the government is spending trillions of dollars to rescue the financial system and restart the economy. We'll discuss the potential impact of the various proposals and focus on effective strategies that companies can employ to manage costs today, including addressing common myths about the effectiveness of various programs.
10:00 - 10:30am	Coffee Break
10:30 - 11:30am	Raising Capital: Finding the Oases in the Desert After being swamped with offers to lend during the credit bubble, corporations found themselves high and dry during the worst days of the financial crisis in late 2008 and early 2009. Even if banks are beginning to take more risk and lend, the prudent CFO is looking at alternative sources for debt capital. Our panel of bankers, CFOs and treasurers will discuss the current state of the credit markets and strategies companies have used to raise capital in spite of the credit crunch.
11:30 - 12:30pm	Managing Banking Relationships in the Post-TARP Environment How do you manage your banking relationships in a financial system that looks very different today than it did barely one year ago? Banks are much tighter with credit, and many now have the US Government as a not-so-passive shareholder. CFOs and treasurers used to dole out cash management or capital markets business to banks in return for credit. If banks aren’t making credit available, on what basis do you award treasury business? Which relationships to do you maintain?
12:30 - 2:00	Luncheon & Keynote Address The Economic Outlook: Are We There Yet? Has the economy truly turned yet? Is the consumer loosening his purse strings — and will consumers continue to drive the US economy? Will the Obama Administration’s aggressive stimulus effort, combined with policy-driven domestic spending and financial rescue efforts, expand the money supply so much that it brings on rapid inflation, a dollar crisis and perhaps the end of the US dollar as reserve currency?
2:00 - 3:00pm	Pensions: Structuring Retirement Savings for a More Volatile World Gyrating interest rates, lower asset prices and new regulation are putting more pressure on companies sponsoring defined benefit plans to accelerate their funding and reduce their risk. How are companies restructuring their investment strategies to tackle the problem? What has the financial crisis taught companies about the merits of defined contribution, defined benefit and cash balance plans? How might regulatory or legislative action from Washington change DB or DC plans in the future?
3:00 - 4:00pm	Breakout Discussion Groups Efficient Treasury Management as a Strategic Weapon During the recent financial crisis, CFOs and treasurers found they often couldn’t borrow to fund working capital and short-term financial needs, and thus managing available cash, receivables, payables and inventory became all-important. CFOs and treasurers will gather to exchange information on best practices in cash and working capital management. Talent Management: Building Tomorrow’s Finance Function How are CFOs and treasurers recruiting and training the people who will lead finance at their company in a year? In five years? What development programs or organizational schemes work best? What can CFOs do to retain their top people in tough economic times, when bonuses might be slimmer than in the past? Participants will share their experience as to what works and what doesn’t.
4:00 - 4:15pm	Coffee Break
4:15 - 5:15pm	Effective Investor Relations in a Bear Market Effective communication with shareholders — and bondholders too, now that credit is in such short supply — is more important than ever in a bear market and economic downturn. In a bear market, investors might be quicker to try to influence corporate governance, or quicker to sell. Who are the leaders in IR today, and what are the strategies they use to reassure investors in tough times?
5:15 - 6:30pm	Free Time
6:30 - 7:30pm	Cocktail Reception
7:30 - 9:30pm	Institutional Investor Recognizes America’s Best CFOs: Awards Dinner & Keynote From Nixon to Obama How Presidential administrations form policy and make decisions is the product of a number of countervailing pressures from many different constituencies. How those pressures help determine the outcome often isn’t apparent until years later. Bob Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein broke many of the major stories on the Watergate scandal for the The Washington Post, and who has covered the pivotal events of the last seven Presidential administrations, will look at the history of White House decision-making over the last 37 years and apply those lessons to Barack Obama and his new governing team. What does this tell us about the way the Obama Administration is attacking issues such as the global financial crisis, health care, taxation and the budget, trade and national security?
Day Three - Tuesday, September 15th
7:00 - 8:00am	Buffet Breakfast
8:00 - 9:00am	The View from the Capitol Leading members of the House of Representatives and the Senate comment on the outlook for business and financial legislation in the coming months. How will the Congress fund the ambitious spending and stimulus plans of the Obama Administration? How will US corporate tax law change? What will the regulatory structure of the financial markets look like? Will pension law be amended? What is the outlook for trade and tariffs? Immigration?
9:00 - 10:00am	Tax Management Strategies for Global Companies: Dealing with Change Corporate taxes are almost certain to rise under the Obama Administration, as it searches for new sources of revenue to fund its domestic spending initiatives. For example, the President wants to make it harder for companies to defer US income taxes on foreign income. How can CFOs design strategies to minimize the bite of any new US corporate tax policies? What can companies do to repatriate stranded foreign income? What do corporate directors need to know to prepare?
10:00 - 10:15am	Coffee Break
10:15 - 11:15am	Managing Shared Services: Getting the Most from IT, HR, Facilities & Finance What are the governance strategies that work best to make sure that shared services such as information technology, human resources, legal, facilities and finance itself are operating efficiently and are accountable to the business units? What communication strategies work best between shared services and line management to ensure that shared services functions are aligned with the business?
11:15 - 12:12pm	Implementing IFRS: A Practical Approach How can companies prepare to implement IFRS amid so much uncertainty about how, when or even whether US firms will be required to do so? What are CFOs at leading-edge companies doing to get ready and what is the role of the board is overseeing the process?
12:15 - 1:45	Lunch & Keynote The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Explosion of the Financial Crisis Former investment banker and journalist William D. Cohan, author of the New York Times best-seller House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, will discuss his view of how and why Bear Stearns got itself into so much financial trouble that it had to be sold to JP Morgan at a knock-down price. He argues that Bear Stearns serves as the Rosetta Stone to explain how a combination of risky bets, corporate political infighting, lax government regula¬tions and truly bad decision-making wrought havoc on the world financial system.
1:45pm	Conference Concludes

The Corporate Financial Executive Roundtable is attended by invitation only and is designed for an audience of chief financial officers and treasurers from larger U.S. and Canadian corporations. For further information, please contact:

Ann Cornish
(212) 224-3877
acornish@iiconferences.com

Board Member Symposium

All Roundtable guests are also welcome to attend the Board Member Symposium on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, DC. For further information, please contact:

Ann Cornish
(212) 224-3877
acornish@iiconferences.com