'Quest for Balance':

National Conference of Chartered Accountants in October

The National Conference of Chartered Accountants 2011 scheduled to be held from October 20 to 22 at Waters Edge, Battaramulla will delve on the stimulating theme - Quest for Balance. Every year the conference attracts over 1,000 participants, becoming one of the most attended corporate events in the country.

The technical sessions scheduled for October 21 and 22 will feature six high profile speakers, both local and foreign.

ICASL also launched a webpage on the conference that could be visited on www.icasrilanka.com/nationalconference2011.

The webpage facilitates viewers to pose queries relating to each session which will be directed to the respective paper presenter, adding greater interactivity to the webpage. ICASL was instrumental in introducing the concept of national conference to Sri Lanka over three decades ago. The conference has built a reputation, over the last three decades, as a business summit that provokes thoughts and spurs insights into broad economic and business issues; apart from its core emphasis on finance related topics.

"Over 52 years of existence, ICASL has become an influential body of professionals. It's indeed gratifying to see our members at the helm of most of the leading organisations in the country. Out of the 4,300 members, over 25% are well employed oversees and nearly 250 join the profession as chartered accountants every year. While the conference facilitates exchange of profound expertise of both local and foreign experts in chosen fields; it is also a forum where we showcase our collective strength as the standard bearers of our profession," said ICASL President Sujeewa Mudalige.

The 32nd conference will have an interesting line up of technical sessions such as 'Quest for balance - our world: people, planet and profit' by Rita O'Sullivan, Country Director, Sri Lanka Resident Mission (SLRM) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB); 'Quest for balance - our country: vanity, sanity and reality' by Dr. Anila Dias Bandaranaike, Former Asst. Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka; 'Quest for balance - shareholder: risk, reward and responsibility' by J.M.S. Brito, Deputy Chairman of Aitken Spence PLC; 'Quest for balance - CFO: Drive, support and comply' by Robin Fieth, Executive Director, Finance and Operations of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales; 'Quest for balance - IFRS: Theory, practice and transition' by John O'Grady, Partner/Asia Pacific Area IFRS Leader of Ernst & Young; and 'Quest for balance - You: Role, rhetoric and reality' by widely acclaimed motivational speaker from Australia, Avril Henry. Each session will comprise a 30 minute paper presentation, followed by one hour panel discussion.

The national conferee is one of the key events in the ICASL's annual calendar and is a forum that gathers all its members from different generations, backgrounds and different continents of the world together.