Azernews.Az

ISTANBUL – The Istanbul Finance Summit, or IFS, to be held in Istanbul on Sept. 28-30, will host some of the most important figures of the global financial world from North America, Europe, the Gulf Region and East Asia.

The annual summit will be organized by PGlobal, Yedi24 Group of Companies and Germany’s Financial Gates GmbH at the Bahceseher University.

It will be the first international financial summit including nine different panel meetings and first event within the project of making Istanbul an international financial center.

The summit
The first IFS will be inaugurated at the prime ministerial level and will gather top leaders in the banking, corporate finance and project finance sectors as speakers.

IFS is designed to provide an annual platform for discussions on the current state and future directions throughout the world, Dr. Murat Yülek chairman of the advisory board of IFS,
was quoted by the Hürriyet Daily News as saying.

"With the devastating affects of the global crisis, well-known world financial centers such as London have started to lose their power and dynamism," Yülek said.

As such, new cities such as Paris, Shanghai and Istanbul are vying to become the new financial centers, he said.

"For example Davos, a small town in Switzerland has managed to attract world leaders, opinion makers and top economists every year. I believe that Istanbul, with its long history of being one of the most attractive centers of trade and economy, could be the new financial center of the world," he said.

"The IFS could turn into the new global meeting of discussion on world financial issues."

The panel sessions on stabilizing the financial market after the global crisis, financing trade and insuring export loans, Islamic finance, Islamic banking and investment markets, financing energy and local projects, private investments, investment markets and alternative financial resources and scheduled to be held.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimsek, head of the Turkish Central Bank, Durmus Yilmaz, head of the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Huseyn Erkan, head of Istanbul Chamber of Commerce Murad Yalchintas, as well as top level foreign guests, including Brazil Central Bank Deputy Governor Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin, President Jochen Sanio, Mexican Central Bank chairman Augustine Karstens, president of the Islamic Development Bank Ahma Mohammad Ali, Polish Central Bank representative Zbignew Hochcuba, City Group senior economist William Buiter and Yale University Economics Department Professor Robert Shiller are expected to attend the summit.