The Chicago Board of Trade’s Educational Research Foundation and Kent State University’s Center for Financial Engineering are pleased to announce that Donald R. van Deventer andDr. Sheng-Cheng Hu will be the keynote speakers for the Asia-Pacific Futures Research Symposium (APFRS) being held March 2 - 3, 2009, at the Grand Hyatt in Taipei, Taiwan.  

The APFRS is one of the most respected derivatives research conferences in the world, having begun when the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) hosted its first symposium in 1991. Today’s symposium is organized by Kent State University’s Center for Financial Engineering, home to a financial engineering master’s program ranked 13^th in North America by GlobalDerivatives.com.    

The two-day symposium presents cutting-edge research by financial engineers in four in-depth sessions, with original, peer reviewed papers and discussant sessions.

“We are very pleased to have two highly respected industry leaders in Dr. van Deventer and Dr. Hu giving this year’s key note addresses,” says Dr. Mark Holder, director of Kent State University’s Center for Financial Engineering. “The symposium’s mission to promote and foster the advancement of financial engineering in the Asia-Pacific realm is only furthered by their involvement with APFRS.” 

Donald R. van Deventer, bestselling author and chairman and chief executive officer of the Kamakura Corporation will give a keynote address entitled “Lessons From the Credit Crisis: Macro Factor Hedging Strategies.” Dr. van Deventer, founder of the Kamakura Corporation, a leading international risk management firm, is also the author of four books. His book “Financial Risk Management in Banking” (with Dr. Dennis Uyemura, Probus Publishing, 1993) is one of the best known books in its field.Dr. van Deventer has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Credit Risk since 2005, and is a member of Risk Who’s Who and Risk Hall of Fame.

Dr. van Deventer’s keynote address will ask APFRS attendees:

·       Is it right to say that no one could have predicted the financial crisis, so it’s not my fault that the bank has gotten into trouble? 

·       What senior-level mistakes led to current troubles at major international financial institutions?

·       What have we learned about risk management policies and procedures to avoid future problems?

·       What popular approaches to risk management have failed in the crisis?

·       What are the implications of past crises for the resolution of the current credit crisis?

Former Chairperson-Minister of the Financial Supervisory Commission of the Republic of China (ROC), Dr. Sheng-Cheng Hu has been an Academician, Academia Sinica, ROC since 2000, and is currently a corresponding research fellow at the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica. Dr. Hu’s keynote address is entitled “Financial Crisis and Financial Derivatives.”  Dr. Hu is both a respected financial scholar and industry practitioner, having served as chairperson-minister of the council for economic planning and development and minister of state of the Republic of China from 2001 to 2007. Dr. Sheng-Cheng Hu was also awarded the First-Class Medal Award in 2008 by Executive Yuan.   

“I am honored to speak at APFRS,” Dr. Sheng-Cheng Hu says. “The APFRS is an ideal platform for sharing ideas and dialog which brings about innovative insights and varying points of views from practitioners, academics and government officials alike, all to the advancement of financial engineering in the Asian-Pacific realm.”   

The success of the APFRS in large part is due to generous funding and support from local and global sponsors including The Institute for Financial Markets, National Chung Hsing University, National Taiwan University, The Financial Engineering Center of Taiwan, Xiamen University, Myongji College, Hong Kong Baptist University,The Journal for Futures Market and Review of Futures Markets.

Kent State University’s Center for Financial Engineering is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge in derivatives and a catalyst for the development of the field of financial engineering through education, training, and research.  The Center for Financial Engineering hosts; the Master of Science in Financial Engineering (MSFE) program, the Olga A. Murel Financial Engineering Trading Floor, the Asia-Pacific Futures Research Symposium and the Review of Futures Markets journal.

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Media Contacts:

Michelle Parrish, Kent State University, Center for Financial Engineering, mparris3@kent.edu, 330-672-2717     

Kevin Brosien, Kent State University, University Communications and Marketing, kbrosie1@kent.edu, 330-672-8589