Letter from Inez: June 2013

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By now I hope most members of the Alliance have received my messages regarding the postponement of our Annual Summit, originally scheduled for next week in Istanbul. Due to the escalating confrontations between antigovernment protestors and police in Istanbul (and across Turkey), host bank Garanti Bank believed that the Summit should be postponed in the interests of traveler safety. Both Garanti Bank and the governing board of the Alliance regret that this postponement became necessary.

The new dates, Wednesday 11 – Friday 13 September 2013, will I hope allow everyone sufficient time to rearrange their calendars so that they can still attend. I know that the postponement is an inconvenience (though I am sure that everyone can support the rationale), but the Summit is still going to be an exciting, productive, and thought-provoking week. We have many new members to welcome: Centenary Bank (Uganda), Banco Nacional de Costa Rica, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Commercial Bank (Saudi Arabia), Itaú Unibanco (Brazil), and Bank al Etihad (Jordan). We have prospective new members from Latin America, Africa, the Balkans, Asia, and the Middle East who are considering Alliance membership, too. And we have the long-awaited chance to renew existing professional acquaintances and continue cementing the esprit de corps that has made our Alliance so powerfully effective. For myself, our time in Istanbul will be the first time I meet many of our members. I am looking forward at last to having faces to put with names and Skype-filtered voices.

We are still very much intending to celebrate the launch of our “how-to” guide, Winning the Women’s Market, in Istanbul. But rather than keep it under wraps for three months, we will be excerpting portions for you to read between now and the rescheduled dates. The material in Winning the Women’s Market will form the basis for the best practice sessions in Istanbul, and I hope you will be as excited to see it in print as we are.

We’re also delighted to share that we are currently working with McKinsey, the renowned management consulting firm, exploring strategies to sustain our momentum and channel it to enhance our value proposition to our members and other stakeholders.

On behalf of the governing board of the Alliance, and Summit host Garanti Bank, please accept our regrets about the Summit’s delay, and also our commitment to you that it will be the outstanding event we had planned — just 90 days later.

See you in Istanbul in September.

Inez Murray, Chief Executive Officer
Global Banking Alliance for Women