A day of prattling, or a sensible idea? Global dispute resolution conference may be a good direction for FX firms

Regular readers of FinanceFeeds will no doubt be familiar with our perspective on industry conferences, which comprise of pre-meditated panel discussions and passe, forgettable content that cannot be monetized by attendees, especially in the wake of new media and interactive methods of reaching new strategic partners or customers.

As much as going to great lengths to gain new partners and customers is vital for the survival of all FX industry participants these days, so is the mitigation of complaints that may turn into expensive, and reputation-damaging lawsuits from customers, especially in today’s highly regulated environment in which custodians of client funds and masters of the destiny of investments made by retail traders are under constant scrutiny.

What if you could go and discuss dispute resolution at a conference with global stakeholders?

Instead of heading straight down the litigation route, there is a new method of dealing with disputes and how to resolve them, which takes the form of a dispute resolution conference by the name of Global Pound Conference (GPC) which will take place in the form of a series of events which commence in Singapore, Asia’s largest interbank FX center and the third largest FX center in the world, and conclude in London, home to the world’s largest financial institutions and over 50% of global institutional FX order flow.

The Global Pound Conference was named in memory of Roscoe Pound, the reforming Dean of Harvard Law School who served during the 1920s and 1930s, and brings together commercial parties, ​​ chambers of commerce, lawyers, academics, judges, arbitrators, mediators, policy makers, and government officials across 36 cities in 26 countries.

The credentials of the organizers are absolutely of the highest level, as the event series will be chaired by Michael McIlwraith, Global Chief Litigation Counsel at GE Oil & Cas and Director of IMI. The event’s professionl conference organizer is Dan Rivlin, CEO of Israeli conference organization giant Kenes Group International (Kenes is the Hebrew word for Conference).

The idea is to generate debate on existing methods of arbitration and resolution, and examine current tools and techniques whilst bringing to the table new ideas to assist in the generation of actionable data on the requirements of corporate and individual handlers of dispute resolution across multiple jurisdictions.

In the FX industry, which not only is a business with a high risk of litigation from customers due to the risk to client funds and due diligence requirements, but is also completely global and therefore spans cross culturally as well as being multi-jurisdictional.

Litigation between companies in the FX industry, and between end users and FX firms is often initiated very quickly nowadays and comes with high costs for both sides.

The question is, does a dispute resolution conference attended by such members of the legal fraternity as mentioned pave the way toward less costly, amicable settlement for firms doing business globally, or will those who consider the court room the only place to settle disputes write it off as a day of prattling?