Introduction

Abstract

On behalf of the Council of Management of SUERF, I welcome participants to our sixteenth Colloquium in Lisbon, which has brought together 170 participants. This implies that about half of our personal and corporate members are present or represented. In view of the tightness of budgets in universities and financial institutions, the perceived risks of international travel when the decision to participate had to be taken and the ever-growing competition from both purely academic conferences and the more commercially organized events aimed at professionals in the financial sector, participation in the Lisbon Colloquium must be regarded as very satisfactory. The Council is particularly pleased to welcome six participants from Eastern Europe, where we have made special efforts to enlarge our membership and make participation financially manageable, and a number of participants from outside Europe, coming from as far as Japan and South Africa.