James Satariano

The chairman of the Institute of Directors Malta Branch (IoD), James Satariano, said Malta’s efforts since 1998 to improve corporate governance education for the local business community – resulting in dozens of conferences, workshops, seminars and activities in the corporate governance field – had culminated with the IoD being asked to organise the 20th European Corporate Governance Conference as part of the Maltese EU presidency programme.

Mr Satariano said it was an honour to have been selected as the leading corporate governance entity in the region and to organise the most important corporate governance event in Europe this year.

The conference is supported by the Ministry of Finance and will be opened by Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, featuring 30 world-class speakers, adding up to the single, most talented corpus of corporate governance experts ever to visit Malta.

Mr Satariano revealed that the conference had been a year in the making and that its co-organisers, the European Confederation of Directors’ Associations (ecoDa), led by secretary general Béatrice Richez-Baum, had been invaluable in assisting to identify a top-tier group of speakers.

The conference, to take place on May 4 at Le Meridien, Balluta Bay, will be a full-day event and will feature five panels that will be exploring long-term value creation; rebuilding trust with corporate governance; corporate governance and CSR; digitalisation and innovation; and ‘The 20th European Corporate Governance Conference: A milestone for Corporate Governance history’, which will see contributions from Patrick Zurstrassen, honorary chair of ecoDa, founding member and former chairman of ILA, the Luxembourg Institute of Directors; David Devlin, chairman, European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); and Stephen Martin, director general, IoD UK.

Five leading international moderators have been recruited to ensure that every panel is dynamic and interacts effectively with the audience of over 200 leading CEOs, chairmen and directors from some of Europe’s top private sector companies, policy-makers and NGOs.

The panels will be moderated by Edwin Ward, CEO at Ogilvy; Stephen Martin; Susanne Knöfel, deputy head of unit, DG Justice; Leena Linnainmaa, chair, European Corporate Governance Codes Network; and Elizabeth Krahulecz, director, head of EMEIA Regulatory and Public Policy Brussels Office, EY, main sponsors of the conference. Paragon Europe from Malta are co-sponsors.

Mr Satariano said: “I am delighted that we were able to partner with ecoDa along with BusinessEurope and EuropeanIssuers to deliver such a strong corporate governance conference in Malta. IoD Malta has been at the forefront of corporate governance education under my leadership and the award of this conference to be staged here gives me great satisfaction. I hope to see many local directors attending and benefitting from listening to these leading experts. It will also be a place where the business community can do business. I believe this is by far the most significant business conference held in Malta. As our economy grows and becomes more international, this is exactly the kind of quality international business events we have to stage.”

To register, visit http://paragonevents.eu/corporate-governance.php or call 9920 7677.