Club Long-Term Investors

Venice Forum

Towards a Sustainable Future :

The Role of Long-Term Investment

Thursday 28 October and Friday 29 October 2010

Venice, Island of San Clemente

Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), in the context of the 2010 activities of the Long-Term Investors Club (LTIC), in co-operation with Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (Feem) and with the partnership of Eni, is organising the Venice Forum "Towards a Sustainable Future : The Role of Long-Term Investment", which will be held from the 27th to 29th October 2010 in the Island of San Clemente (Venice), Italy. The Forum is promoted by LTIC, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF).

The Forum is a high-profile seminar and aims at discussing the main features of long-term policies and investments by gathering the most eminent experts from academia, the business community and the policy sphere all over the world. There is a strong need for a long-term vision to tackle the major challenges facing our society : climate change, environmental protection, sustainable use of exhaustible resources, urbanisation, poverty, immigration and education. Strategic investments in infrastructure, energy, telecommunications, and human capital, play a key role in improving standards of life and social cohesion, as well as in sustaining the economy as a whole. Exit strategies from the economic and financial crisis must be therefore designed on this basis. The transition to a low carbon economy and the laying groundwork for increased urbanisation are examples showing that major investments in technological innovation, renewable energy, water infrastructure, telecommunications and transport, will be required over the next years.

The creation of a EU new regulatory framework, including accounting standards, prudential principles, fiscal incentives, rules for project financing, and corporate governance, to foster the attractiveness of long-term investments in Europe, is go-ing to be one of the central topic of the Forum discussion. Moreover, the contribution of long-term investment to the stability of the global financial markets - by reducing volatility - and the role of private and public capital in solving market failures will also be addressed in depth.

The Club of Long-Term Investors was created in 2009 by the European Investment Bank (EIB), the French Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC), the Italian Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), and the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KFW), with the objective to create strong links among major long-term institutional investors and to coordinate their long run strategies in the global economy.

The Club is engaged in various activities, notably supporting academic research and studies aimed at promoting the role of long-term investors. The Club has been already active in advising and drafting main documents produced by international institutions, like the European Commission (i.e. de Larosière Report), and the main world summits such as the G-8 and the G-20.

The Venice Forum is the third conference organised by the Club, after the two international conferences held in Paris (2009) and in Rome (2010). The audience of the conference will mainly consist of repre¬sentatives from the world’s most important Think Tanks, whose work proves to be particularly relevant in supporting national and international policy making.