ICLIF endowment fund now at RM800mil

KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Negara will increase the endowment fund for International Centre for Leaderhip in Finance (ICLIF) to RM800mil from RM500mil currently.

According to Bank Negara governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz, the higher allocation was to raise the support for ICLIF’s programmes, its faculty and research.

One area that would be given more focus was enhancing the capabilities of leaders to face emerging challenges and volatility of the future financial markets, she said in her welcoming speech at the ICLIF dinner yesterday.

Zeti said leadership qualities would be the key essential criteria needed for the financial industry to face the volatility of the markets.

“There is an increasing divergence between the developed and emerging economies.

“The new growth centres such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East are expected to have a share of global markets that exceeds that of developed nations by 2011.

“These (changes) will bring about more volatility to the financial markets.

“What kind of leadership qualities are imminent to steer an organisation in the unpredictable and prone-to-shock market environment in the future?” she said.

According to ICLIF new chief executive officer Rajeev Peshawaria, the best leaders maximise the performance of their organisations as a whole through three pillars of the “brain”, “bones” and “nerves”.

“The brains of a business are the vision and strategy of an organisation that a leader must communicate to make sure that every employee understands them fully.

“The bones are the people and organisation structure while the nerves are the organisational culture,” he said.

The ICLIF leadership centre has four ranges of products and services, namely open enrolment programmes for individuals, custom-built programmes for organisations, leadership advisory services and executive coaching. For Bank Negara statements click here

For Bank Negara statements click here