confident that financial innovation and technological innovation will continue to advance together. that is why we consider meftec, which is a showcase for the best in financial technology, plays such an important part in underpinning bahrain ’ s position as the financial centre for the gcc and wider middle eastern region. ladies and gentlemen, i am sure that you are eager to see what the exhibitors have to offer. i thank you for joining us today and again extend my appreciation and thanks to the organizers and exhibitors. i wish you a successful conference and exhibition.

can require banks to hold a more diversified and therefore less risky portfolio of assets. while we recognise that there are advantages to banks in developing expertise in particular economic sectors, there are also significant risks in chasing after the profit opportunities others have already exploited. while regulators can help to ensure that financial institutions ’ risks are well diversified, the main incentive for risk diversification needs to come from the industry itself. the industry needs to develop a greater diversity of business models, more diverse and stable income sources, and more robust risk management and stress testing techniques. the essential consideration in islamic finance, as in all forms of finance, is to find the right balance between business development and risk management. a second issue brought to prominence by the recent global financial turmoil concerns financial institutions ’ liquidity risk management. conventional financial institutions and their regulators clearly did not pay sufficient attention to liquidity risks in the run up to the crisis. liquidity has been a source of potential risk for the islamic financial services industry for some time, particularly given the relative unavailability of short - term, liquid money market instruments that are shari ’ a compliant. to assist islamic financial institutions to overcome this problem, the cbb has recently developed an islamic sukuk liquidity instrument. this is a repurchase agreement which has been designed to enable financial institutions to access short - term liquidity against government of bahrain long - and short - term ijara sukuk. despite this important innovation in the cbb ’ s standing facilities, there is a continuing need for more depth and liquidity in shari ’ a compliant money markets and the cbb will continue to explore other such initiatives. a final issue which the recent global financial turmoil has brought to prominence concerns corporate governance. the experience of the conventional financial sector has been a reminder that financial institutions need high standards of corporate governance as they are entrusted with other people ’ s money. while this is true of all financial institutions, the need is particularly great for those which are shari ’ a compliant due to several issues that are specific to their business model. decisions on profit distribution, for example, require the careful balancing of the interests of multiple stakeholder groups – not just shareholders as in conventional banks, but the interests of the holders of investment accounts as well. investment account holders are exposed to many of the same risks as shareholders, but lack the same control rights – such as the ability to vote for board members – that are attached to equity ownership. balancing these different stake holder interests