The Hindu : CII meet to focus on risks in business environment

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 03, 2003

Business

Business

CII meet to focus on risks in business environment

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI SEPT. 2. A two-day international conference on Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) for the benefit of manufacturing industries is being organised here on September 11-12 by the Confederation of Indian Industry-Southern Region (CII-SR) to encourage companies to adopt a proactive instead of a reactive approach to the fast changes in the global business, trade and regulatory environment.

According to the organisers of the conference, while certain kinds of risks like volatility in interest rates are more obvious, many companies come to grief because of the lack of awareness of risks arising from other changes in the global business environment.

These include imminent tariff reductions (offering not only opportunities abroad but also greater competitive threat at home) through the WTO (World Trade Organisation) regime and free trade agreements being entered by India with many countries, changes in the corporate governance and regulatory framework in countries where Indian businesses have either a market or investment, consumer protection measures such as product liability, risks from a high level of attrition of knowledge-intensive workers and human resource management (HRM) risks involved in mergers and amalgamations.

Addressing a press conference here today, the Chairman of the Manufacturing Sub-Committee of the CII-SR (and President, Fenner India), K. Mohan, said the conference would also focus on societal risks and financial and environmental risks. Senior representatives and chief executives of Ernst & Young, Deloitte Haskins and Sells, Accenture, United India Insurance, AMP Sanmar, SEBI, Risk Capital Management Partners, Administrative Staff College of India, Crisil, MICO and IBM would deal with various themes in the conference. The first plenary session would be devoted exclusively to the Sarbanes Oxley Act 2002 of the U.S., enacted in the wake of accounting scandals such as Enron and WorldCom and establishing the Public Accounting Oversight Board to regulate the auditing profession and its relationship with clients.

The Chairman of the CII Insurance Committee (and Vice-Chairman, AMP Sanmar Assurance), S. V. Mony, said, manufacturers need to be aware of product liability risks and regulatory risks arising from different product standards, besides risks in customer relationship management. The inaugural session of the conference, which would be devoted to the theme `changing global paradigm: risk management', would be addressed by Philip Chong, Director, Ernst & Young, Singapore, and Ranjana Kumar, Chairperson and Managing Director, Indian Bank. William Boni, Chief Security Officer, Motorola of the U.S., would participate in a videoconference in the session on technology risks.

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