Two years ago Compliance Week launched our first conference for compliance professionals in Europe. I’m delighted to say that planning for our 2015 Compliance Week Europe conference is now underway, and I am thrilled about how things are falling into place. Registration for the event is now open, so if you are compliance officer anywhere from Ireland to Ukraine, I encourage you to attend.
First, the details on the conference itself. Our Europe conference will take place Oct. 26-27 in Brussels, and should attract 175 to 200 compliance, audit, and risk officers from all over Europe. We will have panel discussions with compliance officers talking about how they solve the problems you all face; small workshops where you can continue those discussions in a relaxed, informal way; and keynote speakers from some of the most important regulators in Europe.
Above all, I am pleased to say that our opening keynote speaker will be David Green, director of the Serious Fraud Office in Britain. Green has take the SFO’s anti-corruption mission to heart, and the SFO is probably the most ambitious anti-corruption enforcement agency in Europe. He will talk about how he would like to see corporations manage compliance with the U.K. Bribery Act, and how to work with the SFO when trying to negotiate deferred-prosecution agreements. Green will speak on the morning of Monday, Oct. 26, a superb start to our conference.
Our agenda is still preliminary, but we are working with an outstanding European advisory board and already have a few sessions we can announce:
Achieving Independence as Chief Compliance Officer
Defining & Managing Conflicts of Interest
Defining the Compliance Function With Your Board
Finding the Right Framework to Build Your Programme
Navigating Conflicting Priorities on Privacy
Strong Compliance in Decentralised Businesses
The Role of Compliance in Cybersecurity
Regulatory Change Management That Works
Most of our large panel discussions, such as the list above, will then have a ‘Conversation’ session later in the day: small, private workshops where we cap attendance at no more than 15 people, so you can continue talking about the subject in more depth with your peers. We will also have our ‘Global Track’ of workshops where compliance officers can talk about doing business in specific parts of the world, such as India, China, Middle East, and Eurasia. (If you want a sense of what a Compliance Week Europe conference is usually like, you can also see the agenda for our 2014 program as a sample.)
As always, Compliance Week needs your help to make this conference a success. If you know a topic important to compliance officers that you do not see on our agenda, let us know. If you see a session where you think you could be a good speaker—perhaps you have a great hotline program, or deep experience managing privacy rules, or think constantly about compliance and cybersecurity—let us know. Our conference only succeeds when it is a useful event for you, and nobody knows what is important to compliance officers better than you do. Any thoughts you have, send them to me at mkelly@complianceweek.com.
One disclaimer: we do restrict speaking slots to in-house corporate compliance, audit, and risk officers only, and ideally to executives working and living in Europe. Speakers must also pay their own travel and lodging costs in Brussels, but we do waive the registration fee so you can attend the event at no other cost.
The enthusiasm European compliance and audit professionals have for this profession always astounds me—there is a true passion here, I believe because compliance programs in Europe are still “growing up” and learning how to succeed. Compliance Week wants nothing more than to help you in that mission, so please let us know what you think, and I hope to see you in Brussels in October!
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