NEW YORK, Feb. 17, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Wall Street Journal today announced it will host the "Future of Finance Initiative," a working session that brings together top leaders and thinkers in global finance to identify the basic principles on which a new financial system must be reconstructed. The Journal's financial editors and reporters will moderate the discussions, which will be held March 23-24 in Washington, D.C.
"The financial system will never be the same, but it remains unclear what shape it will take," said Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company. "At this critical time, when we have unprecedented levels of government investment and involvement, there is a need for a forum that includes the private sector's views. To that end, we are convening the best minds in finance and policy to discuss and debate on a fundamental framework for a new system."
The leaders at The Future of Finance Initiative will spend a portion of the meeting working in small, off-the-record groups, each to be facilitated by a senior Wall Street Journal editor and chaired by distinguished experts, to identify principles and priorities in key areas such as regulatory structure, derivatives, controls on private pools of money (hedge funds, private equity), global coordination, financial industry compensation, mark-to-market accounting, and methods to ensure adequate access to capital. The groups will report back their findings to the entire forum, which will rank the principles in order of priority.
Participants are expected to include senior officials from the Obama administration, members of the U.S. Congress, and G-20 leaders, as well as CEOs and CFOs of Fortune 1000 companies, top managers of hedge funds, private equity groups, pension funds, and other experts across financial sectors. The results of the conference will be published in a special Journal report that will appear in the print and online editions of The Wall Street Journal on March 30, 2009, just before the leaders of the G-20 nations meet in London.
The Future of Finance Initiative will feature the following financial leaders:
* Cliff Asness, Ph.D., managing and founding principal, AQR Capital Management, LLC * Paul Calello, chief executive officer, Investment Bank, Credit Suisse * H. Rodgin Cohen, partner, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP * Gary D. Cohn, president and co-chief operating officer, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. * Craig S. Donohue, chief executive officer, CME Group, Inc. * Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., president and chief executive officer, TIAA-CREF * Peter R. Fisher, managing director, co-head of fixed income, BlackRock, Inc. * Gregory J. Fleming, senior research scholar, Yale Law School * Robert Greifeld, president and chief executive office, The NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. * Glenn Hutchins, co-founder and co-chief executive, Silver Lake * Robert M. Kimmitt, former U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury * Bill Miller, CFA, chairman, chief investment officer and portfolio manager, Legg Mason Capital Management, Inc. * Ira M. Millstein, partner, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP * Eric Mindich, chief executive officer, Eton Park Capital Management, L.P. * Robert E. Rubin, former U.S. secretary of the Treasury, director and former senior counselor, Citigroup Inc. * Myron S. Scholes, Frank E. Buck professor of finance, emeritus, Stanford Graduate School of Business * Robert J. Shiller, Arthur M. Okun professor of economics, Yale University * Damon A. Silvers, general counsel, AFL-CIO * Robert K. Steel, former president and chief executive officer, Wachovia Corporation * James Turley, chairman and chief executive officer, Ernst & Young * Laura Tyson, S.K. and Angela Chan professor of global management, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley * Meredith Whitney, managing director and senior financial institutions analyst, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
The sessions will be hosted by Wall Street Journal experts Thorold Barker, editor; Dennis K. Berman, deputy bureau chief of Money & Investing; Kenneth A. Brown, editor of Money & Investing; John Bussey, Washington bureau chief; Nikhil Deogun, deputy managing editor; Paul A. Gigot, editorial page editor; Kate Kelly, reporter; Alan Murray, deputy managing editor and online executive editor; Gerald F. Seib, assistant managing editor; Robert Thomson, managing editor and editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company; and David Wessel, global economics editor.
For more information about the Journal's Future of Finance Initiative, please go to https://futurefinance.wsj.com.
About The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal, the flagship publication of Dow Jones & Company is the world's leading business publication. Founded in 1889, The Wall Street Journal has a print and online circulation of more than 2 million, reaching the nation's top business and political leaders, as well as investors across the country. Holding 33 Pulitzer Prizes for outstanding journalism, The Wall Street Journal provides readers with trusted information and knowledge to make better decisions. The Wall Street franchise has more than 760 journalists world-wide, part of the Dow Jones network of nearly 1,900 business and financial news staff. Other publications that are part of The Wall Street Journal franchise, with a global audience of 3.8 million, include The Wall Street Journal Asia and The Wall Street Journal Europe. The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com is the largest paid subscription news site on the Web with 10.9 million users each month. In 2008, the Journal was ranked No. 1 in BtoB's Media Power 50 for the ninth consecutive year. The Wall Street Journal Radio Network services news and information to more than 310 radio stations in the U.S.
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