On Thursday 9 June, under the high patronage of H.S.H. the Sovereign Prince, ACI Monaco will celebrate its 20th anniversary at the Hermitage Hotel. An opportunity for the Financial Markets Association to review these two eventful decades, marked by a series of high-level meetings and symposia and the training of future local financial experts.
Once upon a time… the history of ACI Monaco began more than fifty years ago. It was in 1955 that the Forex Club was founded by Maurice Plaquet, a Frenchman in a world very much under Anglo-American influence. At the end of the ’80s, and at a much more modest level than that of the major European financial markets, Monaco’s financial establishments began to pay closer attention to changes in the profession and the needs of their clients. The idea of creating specialized departments for financial activities began to gain ground.
An influx of traders
So trading floors and asset management departments flourished, attracting more and more new specialists: an army of market operators, the famous traders, moved in. The pioneers in this adventure had to convince both the local authorities and the international leadership of ACI that it was worthwhile to set up a Club here in Monaco. The challenge was to create a forum for meetings and exchanges within the financial profession based on a shared spirit and values. Getting together, uniting, sharing, understanding one another: the values of contact in a world that was becoming more and more automated and profoundly dehumanized. While the future can never be taken for granted, it nevertheless seems reasonable to believe that its twenty years of existence in the Principality have enabled ACI to take up this challenge and win its spurs. Its members are also celebrating twenty years of financial market training provided by volunteers from the Monte-Carlo Technical High School, twenty years of symposia, and twenty years of sporting events: skiing, tennis, golf and jet-ski.
Increasing professionalism in the market
Over the last twenty years, four Presidents have helped the baby reach adult age. With its 95 members, ACI has gone through the ups and downs caused by economic and financial upheavals, and remains strongly dependent on the number of financial establishments present in the Principality. It has supported the steady increase in professionalism in Monaco’s banking sector by offering bank staff a free financial market course every year in the Monte-Carlo Technical High School, and by organizing, on the occasion of its annual general meeting, symposia devoted to the analysis of different financial techniques. The aim is to make them accessible to all, with the obsession of passing on knowledge and know-how.
