ISSUE 23 FEBRUARY 2013 PRICE €6.95
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THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS
Maria Iacovidou
Vice President, Barclays Bank Plc- Cyprus Intermediaries & International Banking
Maria A. Papacosta
Board Member, KPMG Ltd
Irene Psalti
Member of the Board of Directors, Ernst & Young Cyprus Ltd
Androulla Pittas
Partner, Head of Financial Assurance Services, Nicosia office, PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd
Maria Kyriacou
Advocate/Partner, Andreas Neocleous & Co LLC
Demetra Kalogerou
Chair, Cyprus Securities & Exchange Commission
Maria LambrouPaschalis
Partner, Deloitte Ltd
It’s a WOman’s World 50 Leading Financial Services Professionals
+ NICOS ANASTASIADES, GEORGE LILLIKAS, STAVROS MALAS GEORGE VASSILIOU
“Money laundering? Don’t be ridiculous!”
INTERVIEWS
LATVIA
Constantinos Chiotis Angelos Gregoriades Yiannis Retsos
Proof that austerity works?
PLUS:
MONEY / BUSINESS ECONOMY TAX & LEGAL LIFESTYLE / OPINION
Helen Hadjichristoudia
Director, Abacus Ltd
Yiota KythreotouTheodorou
Anastasia Anastassiades
Managing Partner, Pamboridis LLC
Head of Investment Consulting in Cyprus, Aon Hewitt
Eleni Ellina
Maria Kaffa
Chief Compliance Officer, FxPro Financial Services Ltd
Partner & Member of the Board, Baker Tilly Klitou
Maria Dionyssiades
General Manager/ Executive Director, Emporiki Bank Cyprus Ltd, Credit Agricole Group
KPMG Academy Upcoming Seminars: February - June 2013 The Memorandum of Understanding and its Consequences Date: 07/02/2013 Administrators, Receivers and Liquidators Date: 11/02/2013 Profitable Market Analysis Dates: 18-19/02/2013 A Global Perspective on Today’s Insurance Challenges: Solvency, Capitalization and Available Restructuring Tools Date: 27/02/2013 Cash Management in Stressed Scenarios Date: 11/03/2013 Business Process Reengineering Date: 08/04/2013 Accounting and Finance for Non Accountants Date: 15/04/2013 Tax updates 2012* Date: 20/05/2013 International Tax Principles Date: 03/06/2013 Cyprus as a Jurisdiction For Alternative Investment Funds and Asset Management: ICIS Funds, Cyprus Alternative Fund Managers and MIFID Investment Firms* Dates: 10-11/06/2013 IFRS Updates and Advanced Applications* Date: 17/06/2013
* The programmes have been approved by the HRDA. Enterprises participating with their employees who satisfy HRDA’s criteria, are entitled to subsidy. These seminars may contribute to Continuing Professional Development requirements.
For more information please contact: Persa Papademetriou T: +357 22209053 F: +357 22513294 E: ppapademetriou@kpmg.com Visit our website at: www.kpmg.com.cy
©2013 KPMG Limited, a Cyprus limited liability company and member of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative (”KPMG International”), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved.
Grasp knowledge into your hands
Issue 23 February 2013
08 EDITORIAL 10 up front 20 FIVE MINUTES WITH…
It’s a WOman’s World
50
+ opinion
Leading Financial Services Professionals
Making the Most of the Unavoidable By Viktoria Soltesz
42
Femenomics By Persella Ioannides
58
Change is no longer an option By Mike McCormac
68
22
Gender equality is no longer the exception in the professional service sector, say 50 SUCCESSFUL WOMEN
SEEING STARS AND HEARING SILENCE 98 by Peter Economides
76
34
FEATURES 34 | ” money laundering? don’t be ridiculous!“
SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS 43 | Corporate Social Responsibility
if
i Become
69 | Investment Firms
President... What do the three presidential candidates plan to do to revive the island’s financial services sector?
38
80
76 | Back on Track
Interview with former President George Vassiliou
Angelos Gregoriades, the new Chairman of KPMG, on Cyprus’ strengths and weaknesses as a financial centre.
38 | If I Become President…
80 | Feel The Pain
How the three main presidential candidates plan to revive the financial services sector
60 | How to Solve the competitiveness Problem Comparing Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg
64 | Bouncing Back Greek tourism is ready to grow again
Latvia’s turnaround since the 2008 financial crisis could be a model for the faltering countries of southern Europe. But they may not like it...
82 | CEO confidence in growth down The majority of CEOs expect the global economy to remain stalled
6 Gold the international investment, finance & professional services magazine of cyprus
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{money} {business} {economy} {tax&legal} {lifestyle}
EDITORIAL
Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves
I
t used to be called the “glass ceiling”, the invisible yet unbreachable barrier that kept women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. It still exists to a greater or lesser degree all over the world but while one might expect that, in a patriarchal society such as Cyprus, women would not have equal opportunities in many sectors of the economy, things are nowhere near as bad as they once were. It is a fact that women are under-represented in Cypriot politics and, as the majority of the 50 female professionals featured in this month’s cover story told us, the proportion of women CEOs, Chairpersons and Senior Partners continues to be unfairly low. The glass ceiling may have been cracked but it still remains to be completely shattered. That said, the role of women in the business community of Cyprus has been growing steadily and they have especially proved themselves in the services sector, nowhere more impressively than in the legal profession where the numbers of lawyers and judges are almost equal. While many of the practising lawyers who spoke to Gold were happy to admit that a good blend of men and women in a firm tends to make for the best outcome in negotiations, they were also keen to point out that in this so-called “man’s world”, women possess unique qualities that make them if not superior then certainly equal to their male counterparts. The descriptions of women’s particular traits that you will find in our cover story include “proficient at multi-tasking, possessing intuition, great emotional intelligence, excellent communication and managerial skills, being less aggressive, less competitive, better organised, more pragmatic, thorough, persuasive, honest and hardworking than men, having a calm and consistent approach and displaying greater perseverance…” The list, if not endless, is extremely long and one cannot help but wonder why it has taken women so long to get where they are today (and, of course, we all know the three-letter answer: men). Our feature on women in the professional services sector focuses on just 50 individuals. Were it not for space and time constrictions, we could easily have found 500 successful women entrepreneurs, company owners, high-ranking lawyers, accountants and financial consultants. The professional services sector is not only the one that is currently driving growth in the economy; it is also the one in which women are best represented in comparison with their male counterparts. Whether this is merely a coincidence or something more significant is a question for the sociologists. What it certainly does show is that more and more young women in Cyprus are studying subjects at university that were once considered an exclusively male domain and they are subsequently using their academic qualifications to carve out a successful career. There is probably more than meets the eye to Christine Lagarde’s amusing remark of three years ago that “Ιf Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters, today’s economic crisis clearly would look quite different”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel may not be everyone’s favourite, even in her own country, but the mere fact that she is the leader of the most powerful country in the European Union says a great deal for Germany’s electorate. We look forward to the day when Cyprus, too, will have high-profile women politicians. For now, we are pleased and proud to pay tribute to at least some of the women who, thanks to their professional abilities and skills, are making a major contribution to the country’s prospects and prosperity.
John Vickers, Chief Editor john@imh.com.cy
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8 Gold THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT, FINANCE & PROFESSIONAL SERVICES MAGAZINE OF CYPRUS
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