There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full...-Henry Kissinger...

Last week I was up in Genting Highlands attending MARIM's Risk Management Conference 2009 with the theme: 'Building corporate Resilience via Effective ERM'. The conference began (after registrations et al) at 2 pm, June 15, 2009 monday with the Academic Track, with presentations of selected academic papers based on empirical research. Papers presented were: The Relationship Between Board of Directors and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Practices (Assoc Prof Dr Ahmad Shukri Yazid of UDI et al; Philosophy and Practices of Risk Management in Malaysian Islamic Banks (Prof Dr Nor Hayati Ahmad UUM et al) and The Role of Chief Risk Officers in the Adoption of ERM (Assoc Prof Dr Shukri,(UDI) Assoc Prof Dr Mohd Rasid Hussin (UiTM) & Dr Wan Norhayate Wan Daud).

Me and the academics...hehe

(Assoc Prof Shukri UDI, Prof Nor Hayati UUM and

Assoc Prof Dr Rasid, UiTM (the first asian PHD holder in Risk Management)

One for the album with GOH YBhg Dato' Muhammad Hatta Ab Aziz, Secretary, National Security Council, Prime Minister's Department

Panel session with Tan Sri Lau, moderated by Director, The Malaysian Institute of Integrity on the topic: 'Global Financial Crisis: How Boards can pre-empt Future Shock'

All in all there were many very good papers both from practice and academia. Like other management functions, Risk Management joins the struggle and the bandwagon to get noticed by top management and oh well, the board! Its a tough battle especially in today's highly competitive evil knievel corporate scenario. To quote Dave Ulrich (one of my favourite HRM Gurus) : '.. being strategic and getting boardroom support means being at the table and not on the table'...haha. Tan Sri Lau encroached on my time as he passionately drowned himself with all the 'dark' corporate scenarios from Timbuktu to Kuala Lumpur (hehe). Good for me though, so I wouldn't have to say much. But as usual, I always like to go down the provocative 'devil's advocate' route with my ever so repetitive '...men have been swindling other men on many occasions'...bla bla bla and asked delegates to google this article that appeared in the 7 August , 2008 issue of The economist entitled 'Risk and The Credit Crunch: Confessions of a Risk Manager' which essentially laments (as an insider) and explains why it is so hard to stop traders behaving recklessly. I then quoted a december 18, 2008 article by Theodore L Dysart and Neil S Novich's of Directorship, 5 critical areas that boards normally ask the one-year-hence question in virtually any area of their interest and responsibility. They are: 1. strategy 2.operations/organization 3. Balance Sheet/Liquidity 4. Compensation and 5. Enterprise Risk Management. No...yes no, I am not going any deeper than this..haha. I am sure you must have been bored enough by now (evil wink). Not easy to keep delegates awake and what made it worst was my bad throat was building up but strangely that night, during the Gala Awards Dinner, I was called up to give a song...and it (to my horror) went quite well, I must say..hehe. But this report (wink) would not be complete if I did not acknowledge the hard work of Puan Arpah Abu Bakar (MARIM manager and UUM Risk Management lecturer) and her team for a very succesful conference (especially in times when the training fraternity is experiencing a 42% drop in attendance!). Of course, the support from MARIM's management committee, I suspect, must have been immense and quite thankless too, I would imagine (heheh). Well done fellas!