LOS ANGELES, Nov. 16 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- EurOrient Financial Group
(“EurOrient”) notes that a revolutionary change has swept the globe
resulting in the global economic integrations, private capital flows are at
least five times greater than official assistance, where many different
actors (from multilateral banks to nongovernmental organizations) now play a
much greater role in development, and where technological change has
revolutionized the way business is done. Recognizing the remarkable scale of
these changes, EurOrient Financial Group is convinced the world is at a
pivotal juncture. The EurOrient believes that these changes mandate a full
review of EurOrient’s investment policy priorities and a complementary
retooling and restructuring of the principal instruments of this policy. The
EurOrient Financial Group also notes that the necessity to enhance the
effectiveness investment operation by 2007 adds an additional imperative --
the need to review the investment operations with a careful eye to ensuring
the most cost-effective use of these increasingly scarce dollars. EurOrient
Financial Group further notes that while this year EurOrient has accelerates
this process, it by no means finishes it. The road ahead will be an arduous
one and the decisions facing by the Treasury Board of EurOrient Financial
Group will be increasingly difficult. Finally, the EurOrient Financial Group
notes with special attention the seriousness with which it accepts these
responsibilities. Our actions in the area of investment operations are
perhaps unique in that they directly affect the lives and security of
billions of less fortunate human beings around the world.
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Fiscal 2006 marked an escalation of the process of renewal at the
EurOrient Financial Group, building on the vision of an institution that
delivers development results and reflecting the EurOrient’s guiding
principles of greater selectivity in activities, strengthened partnerships,
emphasis on client focus, increased results orientation, strong commitment to
financial integrity and discipline to process control.
THE EURORIENT’S LEGACY PROGRAM
The objective of EurOrient Financial Group Legacy Program is to focus all
institutional resources on the development of capacity building in service
delivery. The EurOrient Legacy Program aims to fulfil its mission of a
professionally excellent institution that responds quickly to the evolving
and varying needs of its clients and provides a wide range of high-quality
services; that operates through partnerships and acts as a catalyst for
private-public collaboration; and that builds capacity and knowledge based
organization.
The EurOrient Financial Group Legacy Program is a plan for fundamental
reform to make the EurOrient more effective in delivering its financial
product and services and in achieving its basic mission of mobilizing
financial, technical and human resources for the benefit of developing
nations seeking sustainable economic development and poverty reduction. The
Legacy Program is an expression of the EurOrient’s business strategy and
focuses on the external delivery of higher-quality products and services.
At the core of the EurOrient Financial Group Legacy Program is the
commitment to three broad-based development goals: investments that: 1) is
focused on the private sector; 2) supports economic reform and the
enhancement of market-based economies; and, 3) Promoting pro-poor growth -
enabling a pace and pattern of growth that enhances the ability of poor women
and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth.
The Legacy Program is rooted in the recognition of the need for change if
EurOrient Financial Group is to play a much greater role in development, and
where technological change has revolutionized the way business is done. The
central objective of the program is to make the EurOrient Financial Group
more efficient and to increase the development impact and efficiency of
everything it does.
Through the Legacy Program, the EurOrient’s shareholders and management
are investing in and implementing a series of changes over 48 months to
transform the way the institution does business: improving its products,
speeding up its processes, lowering its costs, making it more demand driven,
and increasing its development impact. The Legacy Program has also
established clear performance criteria against which progress will be
measured and for which management will be held accountable.
The Legacy Program takes a comprehensive approach to increasing the
EurOrient’s development effectiveness in four priority and related areas:
refuelling current business activities; refocusing the development agenda;
retooling the EurOrient’s knowledge base; and revamping institutional
priorities. It will:
-- Develop new financial products and advisory services with the emphasis
on increasing flexibility and timeliness for clients. EurOrient
Financial Group thematic product will include investments in
securities based on national themes and is designed to identify longer-
term trends in the marketplace and to mobilize capital, human
resources and technology for the benefit the individual investment
selection.
-- Build technical expertise in key sectoral areas of development and
expand the EurOrient’s focus out of financing basic infrastructure to
municipal finance.
-- Further focus in countries activities in order to allow EurOrient
staff to work more closely with the host governments in order to
better customize Country Investment Strategy and Programs and build
local priorities of development programs.
-- Strengthen the EurOrient’s information management system to collect,
synthesize, and disseminate the best in development thinking.
-- Reform the EurOrient’s human resources system to create a more
flexible, performance-driven, home grown human capital, and diverse
institution.
The fundamental retooling of the EurOrient’s investment operations will
be judged by its impact on development effectiveness. Therefore, a broad
range of specific measures for gauging effectiveness and accountability are
being deployed. These include:
-- Improve investment discussion making process based on EurOrient
Investment Cycle Framework - Clearly defined business standards is
been set for managing the portfolio and for lending and
non-lending/investment services; and
-- Building organizational capacity to deliver against current and growth
mandates - Planning, acquiring, organizing, developing and retaining
the resources (e.g. human, financial, technological), competencies
(e.g.subject matter and leadership skills including transition
capability), processes and scalability to support current and
anticipated responsibilities; and
-- Planning and corporate performance measurement - The process for
defining strategic direction, aligning business planning and the
development of ongoing measurement and reporting of performance; and
-- Investment Risk Management - Policies, practices and systems supporting
investment risk management, measurement and oversight. Monitoring the
main determinants of what makes projects go well or badly, such as
ensuring that projects are well prepared, well supervised, and that
implementation problems are recognized and dealt with quickly; and
-- Management Controls And Compliance With External And Internal
Requirements - Identification, assessment, monitoring and reporting on
management controls over key corporate processes and key compliance
elements; and
-- Managing Third Party Relationships - The systems and processes to
manage third party relationships including selection, monitoring
performance and integration into EurOrient Financial Group Investment
Board operations.
-- External Communications - Planning, execution and evaluation of
external communications to support achievement of the organization’s
objectives.
In line with the EurOrient’s aim for increasing results, portfolio
management programs to improve the current portfolio accelerated during
fiscal 2007 through the quality-at-entry and portfolio improvement programs.
A key innovation was the concept adopted from the World Bank which shows when
a project is at risk, which is helping to identify the potential as well as
actual problem projects. The concept continues to be refined but already is
serving as an additional tool for portfolio management as well as enabling
more accurate reporting on the status of the portfolio.
Building a sound knowledge base to support investment and lending
activities is at the heart of the Legacy Program. The EurOrient Financial
Group Knowledgebase System is made up of a repository of experiences and
understanding about development issues, which too often has been underused.
Too much knowledge has been locked up in reports that do not provide real-
time and relevant advice to clients, colleagues, and partners. To meet client
needs more effectively and better equip EurOrient staff, work began on
developing a knowledge management system in fiscal 2006 to disseminate and
apply lessons of experience among staff and clients. The system is hosting
information such but not limited to Ex-post evaluations studies of the
various multilateral and bilateral development institutions, project studies,
lessons learn from previous operation. Through this system, complex
information is distilled into usable formats for delivery to those who need
it.
EurOrient Financial Group is constantly pursuing the best practices in
the industry and benchmarking its operations against such best practices. In
this spirit, a study of the operational policies and procedures of major
multilateral institutions were undertaken by EurOrient’s policy staff prior
to the preparation and establishment of Operations Manual. This was to find
the best industry practices for each policy area and adopt such best
practices into EurOrient’s policies and procedures. It is therefore, no
coincidence that users may find several of EurOrient Financial Group policies
and procedures to be similar to that of most multilateral institutions.
EurOrient would like to pay due credit to the Treasury Board of Canada, World
Bank Group, International Finance Corporation (IFC), Asian Development Bank
(ADB), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), European Investment Bank (EIB),
California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and other
institutions upon whose policies EurOrient’s Policies and Procedures are
largely based.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
The Treasury Board of EurOrient Financial Group linked institutional
objectives to resources, and resources to policy. The Treasury Board remains
convinced that the EurOrient Financial Group can lead with fewer resources
than were needed a decade ago. The Treasury Board strongly believes that no
price tag need be placed on leadership. Money matters in development banking,
to be sure, but not nearly as much as consistent policy and constantly
engaged leaders.
As noted earlier, the Treasury Board of EurOrient Financial Group notes
that the asset allocations for emerging markets are already extremely limited
and are likely to be even more so in the future. From the Treasury Board ‘s
perspective, this simply means it is now more imperative than ever that the
Treasury Board forge a strong consensus which will shape how scarce resources
can be most effectively used to help the world’s less fortunate achieve the
same level of prosperity and opportunity presently enjoyed by the citizens
residing in developed countries.
EURORIENT AT GLANCE
EurOrient Financial Group, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, is a private
sector global development finance institution. Its mission is to mobilize
financial, technical and human resources for the benefit of developing
economies seeking sustainable economic development and poverty reduction.
EurOrient invests in projects and programs that promote social development,
build human capacities, and address host government priorities for
investments in physical infrastructure that promotes and enhances social
development. These projects include roads, transportation and communication
systems, water, sanitation and other types of investments with social
development outcomes such as improved quality of life and increased human
knowledge and skills.
Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
Website: http://www.eurorient.com
CEO: Mr. Ron Nechemia
EurOrient Financial Group
