By Shobha Prabhu-Naik.

Quorum 15, a global financial markets think tank, has entered a new partnership venture with analyst firm Greenwich Associates, to support digital membership of its quarterly meetings, via video-enabled links.

Through the joint venture, digital members, comprised of senior level business decision makers from across the buy and sell side, will have the opportunity to collaborate on identifying key business priorities and to strengthen relationships and cooperation within and across their own markets in addition to being updated on the industry challenges identified by the members of the established physical quorums.

Mike Burton, founder and CEO of Quorum 15, emphasised the geographical range of members that will be able to take part in the conversation as a result of the new platform.

“There will be geographical diversity” he stated. “The roles of the people who are typically engaged on a Q15 call will be very similar to what they are today: they tend to be heads of dealing on the buy-side, heads of electronic trading or e-commerce or execution on the sell side. This will open [the conversation] up to many more regional players which is very important. All members will get a sense of what it will be like to be operating and doing business under a slightly different set of circumstances in each of these countries…We’re constantly evolving and Q15 Digital is the next step in that process. In general, I see it as continuing to be a peer level engagement, but wider and more diverse”.

Quorum 15 members currently gather quarterly in a series of meetings held across London, New York, Boston, Hong Kong and Sydney under the Chatham House Rule, with collective recommendations communicated back to regulators, industry associations and relevant government bodies via members’ firms. The ability to communicate openly and effectively will be a main focus of the new video-conferencing service where visibility could potentially be an issue.

“The meeting is operating under the Chatham House rule and also in accordance with our competition law policy,” says Burton. “When people are meeting privately about industry issues we think it’s incredibly important to protect our members and protect ourselves by having a robust competition law policy. We engaged the services of a US law firm not only to put our policy in place but also to put in place training for our chairs so that we practice what we preach.”

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