The Economist Announces the 2010 Buttonwood Gathering

NEW YORK, June 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Economist announced today that it will hold its second annual Buttonwood Gathering on October 25th-26th in New York City.  This year's event will take place at The Graduate Center/City University of New York and will focus on remaking global finance and shifting power dynamics.  Bankers, regulators, and leading policymakers such as Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; Christine Lagarde, France's finance minister; Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup; Wilbur L. Ross junior., chairman and CEO of WL Ross & Co.; and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University are among those already scheduled to speak.  A full program and list of speakers can be found at http://buttonwood.economist.com.

Named after the buttonwood tree where 18th-century traders gathered on Wall Street and the financial-markets column that appears each week in The Economist, the 2010 Buttonwood Gathering will explore pressing economic and financial issues such as sovereign-debt risk, the rise of China, global regulatory changes, and more.  

At last year's Buttonwood Gathering, the director of the National Economic Council, Larry Summers, called on banks to accept the responsibility of greater regulation as a service to their country. Are banks and other financial institutions living up to their responsibilities? Dozens of well-known experts will explore this and other issues as they participate in plenary sessions, working breakouts, and panel discussions throughout the two-day event.

"The Buttonwood Gathering will bring some of the world's brightest minds together to discuss how far we've come over the past year and how far we still have to go in terms of economic recovery," said John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist. "We have a strong program and very high calibre speakers.  Last year's event established the nature of the discourse we want to create with the Buttonwood Gathering.  This year, we hope to build on that. There is certainly a lot to discuss."

Some of the speakers and journalists already confirmed to take part in this year's event include:

Zanny Minton Beddoes, Economics Editor, The Economist

Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor, New York Bureau Chief, The Economist

James Chanos, Founder and Managing Partner, Kynikos Associates

Ed Clark, President and Chief Executive Officer, TD Bank Financial Group

Philip Coggan, Capital Markets Editor and Buttonwood Columnist, The Economist

Sean Dobson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Amherst Securities Group

Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chief Investment Officer, PIMCO

Andrew Feldstein, Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, Blue Mountain Capital Management

Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post

Greg Ip, U.S. Economics Editor, The Economist

Anshu Jain, Head of Global Markets and Member of the Management Board, Deutsche Bank

Mervyn King, Governor, Bank of England

Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economic Affairs, Industry and Employment, France

John Liu, Comptroller, New York City

Philippa Malmgren, President and Founder, The Canonbury Group and Principalis Asset Management

Roger Martin, Dean, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

John Micklethwait, Editor-In-Chief, The Economist

Vikram Pandit, Chief Executive Officer, Citigroup

Raghuram Rajan, Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance, University of Chicago

Wilbur L. Ross Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, WL Ross & Co.

Robert J. Shiller, Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics, Yale University

Joseph Stiglitz, Professor, Columbia University

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author, The Black Swan, Professor, New York University, Principal, Universa Inv.

Matthew Valencia, Wall Street Editor, The Economist

Steven Xu, Director, China Corporate Network, Economist Intelligence Unit

The event is sponsored by RBC Capital Markets, with support from First Republic Bank and Ineum Consulting.

For more information on the program, speakers, or to register for the event, please go to http://buttonwood.economist.com.

This event is open to press.  For media registration, please contact Amy Jaick at [email protected] or 212-641-9834.

About The Economist  

Edited in London since 1843, The Economist is a weekly international news and business publication offering clear reporting, commentary and analysis on world politics, business, finance, science, technology, culture, society, media and the arts.  The Economist has a North American circulation of more than 800,000, a global circulation of more than 1.4 million and more than 4 million monthly unique visitors at The Economist online.  Because of its international editorial perspective, it is read by more of the world's political and business leaders than any other magazine.

SOURCE The Economist