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When the Tenth Annual International Banking Conference took place in September of last year, the market turmoil had already broken out and central banks were already engaged in interventions aiming to minimise the disruptions to money markets and to preserve the implementation of their desired monetary policy stance. While market data on future interest rates suggested that we were in for a rather protracted period of tensions in money and credit markets, it was not obvious at the time that the financial turmoil would turn out to be one of the most challenging events of the last century for our financial systems. Indeed, the international financial landscape looks today very different compared to one year ago and almost every day new events contribute to re-shape it further. In particular, over the past two weeks adverse events occurred almost on a daily basis and led to increased uncertainty and significant financial market volatility. A large bank failed, while several financial institutions had to be partly or entirely taken over by others. In response to the renewed tensions, public authorities announced a number of measures and initiatives to address problems at both stressed markets and troubled individual institutions. In particular, central banks stepped up their efforts to inject liquidity in global money markets in order to guarantee their smooth functioning. As I mentioned earlier, one of the main objectives of this series of conferences is to discuss the main lessons for public policies arising from developments in the international banking and financial sector.