“We are talking to the EC on a regular basis, but we are not sure that we are going to make it,” said Mr Den Dekker.

“Maybe our lobbying efforts are not strong enough compared to those of Bipar. Whether we will win this case is not sure,” he added.

Mr Den Dekker also said that there is opposition from the broker industry to moves by Ferma to include last year’s agreement in the scope of the new IMD.

“It is strange that Bipar and Ferma agreed on the principles of transparency and disclosure and the management of potential conflicts of interest, but when we actually asked to implement this agreement into the directive, they were not happy with our move,” Mr Den Dekker said.

The agreement works today as a guidance and is not binding to either clients or brokers, but would become so if it were included in the directive.

For his part, newly elected president Jorge Luzzi pointed out that the world is going through what looks to be the biggest crisis since the end of the Second World War. Risk managers therefore need to rethink what they are doing and analyse how changes are affecting their work.

One of his objectives as president is to help Ferma grow in this moment of crisis, he said. All in all, he stressed the time is ripe for risk managers to boost their profiles within their organisations.

Vice President Julia Graham stressed that a challenge for Ferma is to help educate risk managers so that they can deal with the challenges created by this fast-changing world and economy.

The emergence of new markets and companies from outside the rich world provide an example of these challenges. “We have to learn to work with countries and companies that have different beliefs but shared objectives,” she said.

Mr Den Dekker expressed satisfaction with the level of the participation in the Stockholm Forum, even though the number of risk managers registered fell a little short of the target of 500 he had set for the event.

“It shows that, even in an economic crisis, companies still consider our job to be important enough to spend some money to go to Stockholm and do some networking,” he said.

Mr Luzzi said Ferma is planning to hold the next Forum, in 2013, in Maastricht, Holland, partly as a show of support for the European project. “Maastricht is a symbolic place for Europe,” he remarked.

Mr Luzzi also noted that federation plans to organise a large seminar next year in a location to be defined, with London and Paris as strong candidates to host the event.

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