.:: Market Liquidity and Implications On Our World Economy ::.

	Zainal Aznam Yusof Director RAM Holdings Berhad Zainal Aznam Yusof was formerly the Deputy Director-General of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS). Prior to that he was the South East Asia Regional Economist at Kleinwort Benson Research (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. From 1990-1994 he was the Adviser in Economics at the Bank Negara Malaysia, the Central Bank. As Adviser he was also responsible for the Balance of Payments Department, Corporate Affairs Department, the Mint, and the Library and Archives of Bank. He holds a B.Sc.(Economics) from Queen's University, Belfast, an M.A. (Development Economics) from University of Leicester and a D.Phil. (Economics) from University of Oxford, United Kingdom. In 1987 he was a Vice President of the Malaysian Economic Association. During the 1987-1988 academic year he was a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), Harvard University (Fulbright Scholar). Currently, he is a Member of the Advisory Board, Faculty of Economics, National University of Malaysia, a Member of the Advisory Council of the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya and an Adjunct Professor at the Northern University of Malaysia. He is also a Member of the Advisory Board of the Research Institute of Higher Education. He is also a Member of the Industrial Coordination Council (ICC). In January 1998 following the financial crisis he was appointed a Member of the Working Group of the National Economic Action Council (NEAC). In February 1998, he was appointed a Member of the Malaysia-Singapore Business Council. He was appointed a Commission Member of the Securities Commission from 1999-2004. In November 2000, he was appointed a Member of the Advisory Board of the Asian Economic Panel, Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University, the Global Security Research Center at Keio University and Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. In July 2001 he was appointed as an Advisor to the President's Advisory Council, Malay Chamber of Commerce, Malaysia. In January 2004 he was appointed Senior Economic Adviser of the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute (ASLI) and the Chairman of ASLI's Centre for Economics and Technology and Centre for Competitiveness and Industry. In 2004 he was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Inequality, Security and Ethnicity (CRISE), Queen Elizabeth House , Oxford University. He was appointed as a Distinguished Fellow, Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Malaysia in 2006. With the launching of the Ninth Malaysia Plan, 2006-2010 in 2006 he was appointed as Adviser by the Prime Minister to the National Implementation Task Force (NITF). In January 2007 he was appointed by the Minister of Trade and Industry to the Malaysian Services Industry Development Council and also to the Logistics Council. The Prime Minister appointed him to the National Innovation Council in December 2006. The greater part of his working career, almost 20 years, was spent in the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), Prime Minister's Department. The EPU is responsible for the formulation of the Malaysian five-year and long-term development plans. He has worked in a wide range of economic areas in the EPU including industry, the New Economic Policy, macroeconomics, foreign investment, privatisation and infrastructure. In December 1988, he left the Government and was appointed Deputy Director of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER). As Deputy Director General of ISIS he was responsible for the economic work of ISIS. He was a member of the ISIS team responsible for the preparation of the Knowledge-Based Economic Master Plan for Malaysia. In September 2004 he was appointed by the Government as Adviser and Coordinator for the Third Industrial Master Plan 2006-2020. Zainal Aznam Yusof has also been engaged as a Consultant to the Malaysian Government, UNIDO, the International Labour Office (ILO), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the ASEAN Secretariat, UNDP, UNCTAD and the Department of International Development (DFID)-Overseas Development Institute (ODI), United Kingdom. He was also an Adviser to the World Bank study on the Bank as a Knowledge Bank. He was also one of the authors with Professor Henry Bruton of a book on the Political Economy of Poverty, Equity and Growth in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. He was a member of the World Bank Core Team to prepare the World Development Report 2000/1 on Poverty and Development. He has also attended a wide range of international conferences and seminars, presented papers and has also been a discussant to a number of international conferences and seminars. Zainal Aznam Yusof was a columnist for the New Straits Times (NST) for a number of years and currently writes for the editorial page of the NST. He was a film critic of The EDGE a weekly economic and financial newspaper from 1998-2004. He has written and published some fiction ( short stories ). In 2006 he attended a Fiction Writing Workshop at the Institute of Continuing Education, Cambridge University. He has appeared on various television networks including BBC, CNN, CNBC, NTV7, RTM, Astro, Al Jazeera and other TV networks in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. A Federal award, a K.M.N. (Kesatria Mangku Negara) was bestowed on him in 1982, a Perak State award, A.M.P. (Ahli Mahkota Perak) was awarded to him in 1987 and a J.S.M. (Johan Setia Mahkota), a federal award, in 199
	Tan Sri Datuk C. Rajandram Executive Deputy Chairman RAM Holdings Berhad Tan Sri Datuk C. Rajandram was appointed Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of RAM Holdings (formerly known as Rating Agency Malaysia Berhad) on 1 May 1991. Currently he is the Executive Deputy Chairman of RAM Holdings Berhad. Prior to assuming the lead position to start up Malaysia's first credit rating agency, he had been with Bank Negara Malaysia (Malaysia's Central Bank) since 1962. He had held various positions in Bank Negara including the Manager for the Accounting Department between 1973 and 1980 and concurrently, the Secretary of the Capital Issues Committee from 1976 and 1985. He was appointed the Adviser for Operations in 1980, a post he held until May 1991. He was seconded to the Ministry of Finance from June 1986 to April 1991 as the Director of a special unit for monitoring and restructuring Government owned companies. Recently, C Rajandram was appointed as a member of the Private Investment Advisory Panel to the Government of Malaysia. He is also a member of the Malaysian Communications & Multimedia Commission which regulates the telecommunication industries of Malaysia. C. Rajandram is a member of the Board of Directors of RAM Holdings Berhad, RAM Rating Services Berhad and RAM Ratings (Lanka) Limited. In 2008, the King of Malaysia bestowed upon C Rajandram the prestigious Panglima Setia Mahkota award, which carries the title "Tan Sri". He is a Fellow of the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants, Member of the Malaysian Association of Certified Public Accountants and a Fellow of the Institute of Banks Malaysia.
	George Ng Senior Director, Asia Marketing NYMEX George Ng, is the Senior Director of Asia Marketing based in the NYMEX, Singapore office. Prior to joining NYMEX, Mr. Ng served as assistant Vice President of Market and Membership Development for the Joint Asian Derivatives Exchange (JADE), where he was responsible for promoting commodity derivatives trading and overseeing their promotions and education functions. Mr. Ng also worked for the Singapore Commodity Exchange and Informatics Computer School in Singapore. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the Wichita State University.
	Professor Kenneth Rogoff Kenneth Rogoff is Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University. From 2001-2003, Rogoff served as Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund. He is also a former Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard. Rogoff's research covers global economic issues, including exchange rates, international capital flows and monetary policy. Rogoff's treatise Foundations of International Macroeconomics (joint with Maurice Obstfeld) is the standard graduate text in the field worldwide, and his monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in 13 languages in over 50 countries. His most recent research includes the widely-cited paper (joint with Carmen Reinhart) on "Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different?" An International Historical Comparison. He is on the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Central Bank of Sweden. Rogoff is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Group of Thirty. Rogoff is also a fellow of the Econometric Society and the World Economic Forum, and has been invited to give numerous named campus-wide lectures at universities around the world. He holds the life title of international grandmaster of chess.
	Dr. Arturo Cifuentes, Managing Director, Structured Finance Department R.W. Pressprich & Co., New York Dr. Cifuentes has worked in the fixed income sector for almost twelve years. He was a Senior Vice-President at Moody's (1996-1999) where he rated more than fifty CDOs; worked at Ambac in 1999/2000 as Managing Director in the Structured Products (CDO) department; managed a hedge fund that invested in CDOs for almost three years (Triton Partners, 2000-2003); and then became an investment banker (he was the Global Head of CDO Research at Wachovia and later joined R.W. Pressprich & Co. to focus on structuring and origination). He has contributed to the development of many analytical techniques that are currently used in the structured finance arena; and he has lectured and consulted extensively on many financial topics in the U.S. and overseas. Most recently, he has advised the U.S. Treasury/OCC (several times); the State of Connecticut Insurance Department; and BCI (a Chilean bank). He has written extensively on financial topics in the international press, trade publications, and academic journals. Before switching to the financial arena Dr. Cifuentes held scientific and engineering positions at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in New York and The MacNeal-Schwendler Corp., an engineering software firm based in Los Angeles. He has also held faculty positions at the University of Southern California, California State University and the University of Chile. Dr. Cifuentes received a Ph.D. in applied mechanics and an M.S. in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech); an MBA in finance (Stern Scholar Award) from New York University; and a degree in civil engineering from the University of Chile.
	David Bensimon The World's Top Foreseer on Market Trends Award-winning author, acclaimed market forecaster, and former interbank head of trading. Has correctly predicted dramatic movements across equities, currencies, commodities, and interest rates throughout 1998-2008. His published track record includes: SPX: Correctly forecast precise peaks in 1998/2000/2007 GOLD: Correctly forecast precise turns in 2001/2006/2007 OIL: Correctly forecast rallies in 03-04/05-06/07-08
	Donald Amstad Donald Amstad is head of fixed income for Asia, a role he assumed in March 2007. He is responsible both for fixed income assets managed in Asia and for representing the group's fixed income expertise to clients in the region. He joined from JP Morgan Asset Management in London, where he was a senior fixed income manager looking after central bank portfolios. This followed various posts in fixed income, mainly in product management or sales with Bank of America, JP Morgan Securities and Nomura International which he joined shortly after graduation. Donald holds a BA in PPE from Trinity College, Oxford.
	Dr. Guan Seng Khoo Head, Group Risk (Models Validation), Group Risk Analytics Standard Chartered Bank GS Khoo heads a team at Stanchart performing all global risk models validation for Basel 2 and BIPRU compliance. He holds a PhD in Physics, and has done post-doctoral research at MSI's research centers in Caltech (Pasadena), Boston, and Tokyo, as well as at the University of Minnesota. Previously, he was the Head, Innovation Unit at the Singapore Exchange, where he researched on & helped create new risk management products and services to be exchange-traded and OTC-ed. Prior to that, he was the Group Chief Risk Officer of RHB Capital, Malaysia, where he implemented an enterprise-wide risk management (ERM) system that cut across all the 10 subsidiaries, including RHB Bank and RHB Islamic Bank. Previously, he was with Man Investment Products (part of the Man Group, the world's largest listed hedge fund manager) where he led a team of financial engineers at NTU in the 90s in developing hedge fund analytics and managing a principal guaranteed fund of funds on a high-performance computing platform, in collaboration with C-DAC, India's Supercomputing Center. He was also SVP and Country Head (USA) at American Bourses Corporation (ABC), a spin-off company of the Man Group, where he was based in Chicago and Denver, partnering Townsend Analytics and Terra Nova Trading to provide risk and trading analytics to institutional and retail clients trading through the ECNs in N America, and in N Asia with Xinhua Financial Network (XFN). He was also the SAS User Group President of Singapore (1999-2001), Regional Director, PRMIA, Thailand (2003-2004) and Deputy Director, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Center for Financial Engineering till 2000, working in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University.
	Arjuna Mahendran Managing Director Head of Investment Strategy – Asia HSBC Private Bank As Managing Director and Head of Investment Strategy – Asia, Mr. Mahendran is responsible for driving research and providing in-depth analysis of markets in the Asia Pacific. He also leads the analytics team in interpreting market economics and developing investment strategies for HSBC Private Bank's clients in the region. Mr. Mahendran is an industry veteran whose career spans a period of over 25 years in both private companies and public sector organisations, including senior positions with the Central Bank and Ministry of Finance of Sri Lanka as well as the World Bank. Prior to joining HSBC Private Bank, he was Chief Economist-Strategist, Asia Pacific at Credit Suisse Private Bank. Preceding this, as Chairman/Director-General for the Board of Investments (BOI) of Sri Lanka, he was responsible for attracting and facilitating inflows of foreign direct investments to Sri Lanka. For his instrumental role in establishing the BOI of Sri Lanka and driving its strategy, he was named a runner-up in Euromoney Strategic Direct Investor's "CEO Lifetime Achievement Award" in 2003. Prior to joining the BOI of Sri Lanka, Mr. Mahendran was the Director and Head of Economic Research (ASEAN and South Asia) at SG Securities. He led an awardwinning team of research analysts and economists in covering stock market asset allocations, providing economic intelligence and forecasts as well as in-depth analysis of countries in the ASEAN region and the Indian sub-continent. He also regularly presented to institutional fund managers in the United States, Asia and Europe. Mr. Mahendran is often sought-after by the media for his views on markets. This includes appearances on CNBC, CNN, BBC, and comments in Bloomberg, The Financial Times, Asian Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review. Mr. Mahendran holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford, England.
	R. Ravimohan Managing Director & Region Head South and Southeast Asia Standard & Poor's Mr. R Ravimohan is Managing Director and Region Head, South and Southeast Asia, Standard & Poor's, which is the foremost global provider of financial market intelligence. He is a member of Standard & Poor's Asia Pacific Executive Committee, and also chairs Standard & Poor's South and Southeast Asia Governance Council. Prior to this, Mr. Ravimohan was Managing Director and CEO of CRISIL. He is credited with building the company from a market leader in credit ratings into India's leading Ratings, Research, Risk and Policy Advisory company, and growing the business from revenues of US $3 million to over US $100 million between 1994 and 2007. Featured among India's 50 most powerful people in 'India Today' a leading India magazine, Mr. Ravimohan also serves as a Member of the Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, India's capital markets regulator, and as a Member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the Reserve Bank of India, India's central bank. Mr. Ravimohan serves on the Boards of CRISIL, the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Limited, India's leading commodities exchange, and Gas Strategies group, a leading global gas consulting and information services company and a subsidiary of CRISIL, based in London. Prior to joining CRISIL in 1994, Mr. Ravimohan set up the Over-The-Counter Exchange of India (OTCEI), India's first electronic stock exchange, as its Chief Executive Officer. He started his career with ICICI Limited where he worked in project appraisal, systems designing, credit administration and merchant banking. He is a Chemical Engineer and has completed the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School.
	Tan Sri Dato' Seri Siti Norma Yaakob Chairman RAM Holdings Berhad Tan Sri Dato' Seri Siti Norma Yaakob, Malaysia's first woman High Court Judge, Court of Appeal Judge, Federal Court Judge and later the Chief Judge of Malaya is the Chairman of RAM Holdings Berhad. Siti Norma was the only woman High Court Judge in the 1980s and went on to create history as the first woman to be appointed as Court of Appeal Judge in 1994, Federal Court Judge in 2001 and the Chief Judge of Malaya in 2005. Prior to her appointment to the Superior Court Bench, she had also served as Senior Assistant Registrar, High Court, Kuala Lumpur (15.06.63 - 31.12.65); President, Sessions Court, Kuala Lumpur (01.01.66 - 31.12.68); Senior Federal Counsel, Attorney General's Chambers, Kuala Lumpur (01.01.69 - 31.08.69); Deputy Public Trustee, Malaysia (01.09.69 - 31.10.70); Assistant Senior Director (Estate Duty), Income Tax Department (01.11.70 - 30.11.73); President, Sessions Court, Kuala Lumpur (01.12.73 - 31.05.80); and Chief Registrar, Federal Court, Malaysia (01.06.80 - 03.04.83). Tan Sri Siti Norma is also an Eisenhower Fellow after having participated in the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship Programme in USA in 1990. More recently, in 2007, she was appointed as an Honorary Bencher of Gray's Inn, London by the Master Benchers of Gray's Inn, and in January 2008, she was appointed as one of the six new judges of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts. Once again, Siti Norma is the first woman judge to join these courts. She obtained her degree of Barrister-at-Law from the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, London and her Certificate in Public International Law in Post-Finals Course, conducted by the Council of Legal Education, London.
	Hock-Meng Foong President and Director PIMCO Asia Pte Ltd Mr. Foong is President and Director of PIMCO Asia Pte Ltd. responsible for client relationship and business development. Mr. Foong joined the firm in 2005 having previously been the Managing Director of Bank Pictet & Cie (Asia) Limited responsible for institutional business in the Asia-Pacific (ex Japan) region. Prior to that, he was a Managing Director of UBS Warburg in the fixed income sales and trading department. Mr. Foong has 23 years of investment experience and holds a B.Sc.(Hon) in Economics from the University of Bath, England, and a M.Sc. in Operational Research from the University of Birmingham, England.