The very successful 6th Annual IBN Business conference was held on June 4-7 in Johannesburg at the Westcliff hotel. This year's theme was "The Current Financial Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges in Africa".

IBN strived to offer members excellent value by assembling the most dynamic high profile speakers. We provided an excellent platform for networking and the sourcing of business opportunities.

Our guest of honour and Keynote address was Maria Ramos, Group Chief Executive of the Absa Group Ltd. Maria Ramos briefed us on how to navigate the economic downturn according to her experience.

We were also honoured by the presentation of Gareth Ackerman, Chairman of Pick ‘n Pay Holdings, who inspired us with explaining his business ethics of “doing good is good business”.

Clem Sunter taught us how to be in business like a fox, he reminded us that if you want your business to be thriving, you have to continuously adapt to the global environment. Our motivational address was delivered by Tony van Marken, who scaled each of the world’s seven continental summits, including the Mount Everest. Tony draws on this experience and his business experience to discuss and overcome challenges in setting and exceeding extraordinary goals.

Andile Mazwai, Group CEO of Barnard Jacobs Mellet, gave details on how we got into this financial crisis and what happened to the global markets. He elaborated on his perspectives on how we can recover from the crisis. These were only a select few of the speakers that addressed our delegates.

We provided our delegates, as promised with 4 workshops on various topics. After an informative conference day, we had to break away and help delegates to forget about the crisis for a couple of hours. On Thursday afternoon we had our teambuilding event which was a survivor course at the sports field on Zoo Lake. This event brought back the “child in us” and delegates were very excited and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. In the evening we had a unique African dining experience at Moyo Restaurant where we were entertained by the famous mentalist, Larry Soffer. He left the delegates perplexed and flabbergasted.

Our closing gala dinner at the Westcliff was attend by 120 delegates and guests, the evening started with Andre, the hilarious hypnotist, his performance made the start of the evening uproarious. The award ceremony took place and the winner of the IBN Entrepreneur award was Salim Dewji the outgoing IBN Chairman who was awarded for his tremendous effort and input in getting the IBN where it is today and the Chapter of the year award was won by the Mozambique chapter.

We would like to thank our Gold Sponsor, of the 3^rd year in a row, Barclays Wealth, and our Silver Sponsor Rakeen for their support in making this event such a tremendous success.    

Pictures of the conference and presentations will be available soon.