Welcome Remarks from the Chief Executive Officer of Bahrain Bourse: Sh. Khalifa Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa

Welcome Remarks from the Secretary General of the Arab Federation of Capital Markets: Rami El Dokany

Welcome Remarks from the President & Chief Content Officer of A-Team Group: Andrew Delaney

Regulator Keynote: Trading Across MENA – An opportunity to transform a greenfield site into a modern trading environment that can compete in the race for investment

Panel: Market data and beyond: Data integration and management in a world of Big Data

• How are market participants ensuring they have access to the right market data and other information services to meet their trading needs and regulatory obligations?
• What are today’s best practices for integrating and managing market data services?
• What opportunity is there for regional players to adopt cloud-delivered services?

Keynote (sponsored): Beyond cash equities – Practical considerations for embracing new markets, asset classes and financial products

• Which MENA financial centres are leading the drive toward more sophisticated products, markets and structures?
• Does regulation have a role?
• Best approaches to market access: local vs. regional vs. global
• How are firms adding new products like ETFs, and asset classes like fixed income, FX and even crypto as they move away from straight equities?

Panel: Exchange systems, DMA hosting and connectivity

• What approaches are the region’s exchange taking to trading platform modernisation?
• What options to trading firms have for hosting to support their DMA systems?
• How are firms ensuring the integrity of their data connections for orders and market data?
• What tools can firms use to ensure their connections are performant?
• How are firms dealing with adding cloud to the mix of connectivity

Presentation

Panel: Addressing market abuse – Lessons learned from implementing surveillance systems for voice and electronic trading communications

• How are market participants addressing market abuse concerns across the region?
• What has been the regulators’ stance on market abuse to date?
• What’s the outlook for 2024/25?
• What are the key considerations for addressing insider trading and other trading-related financial crime?
• What commercial options are open to surveillance teams in the MENA region?

Panel: Next-generation OMS & EMS: OEMS and smart order routing

• How are pan-regional firms deploying OMS and EMS systems?
• What are the relative merits of local/regional vs. global solutions?
• How does the advent of the combined OEMS impact connectivity issues?
• Which markets are driving OMS/EMS/OEMS adoption in the region?
• What does the end-game look like for OMS/EMS/SOR?

Presentation

Panel: Modernising the post-trade work flow

• What is the impact for the global industry of moving to T+1 Settlement?
• How is MENA affected?
• What are the operational challenges of moving to a shortened settlement cycle and what do firms need to do to prepare?
• What is the role of distributed ledger technologies?
• How can automation and innovative technologies help improve post trade processes and workflows?
• What are the expected benefits for firms of moving to T+1 and what does the future look like?