Official Sponsors

20th Annual Asia-Pacific Futures Research Symposium
Hong Kong - February 25 and 26, 2010

History
Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) was founded in 1956 by the Baptist Convention of Hong Kong as the former Hong Kong Baptist College, a private and post-secondary college offering four-year programmes. Dr. Lam Chi-fung was the founding President. In the early 1970s, Dr. Daniel Tse was appointed the institution's second President and Vice-Chancellor. Later, the Government approved the changing of the Chinese name of the institution from "Syu Yuen" to "Hok Yuen". After decades of effort, the College acquired university status in 1994 and was officially renamed Hong Kong Baptist University. Since 2001, Professor Ng Ching-fai has been the University's third President and Vice-Chancellor.

Mission and Vision
HKBU is committed to academic excellence in teaching, research and service, and to the development of the whole person in all these endeavours, building upon the heritage of Christian higher education. HKBU aspires to be a premier institution of higher learning, providing broad-based, creativity-inspiring education with distinctive contribution to the advancement of knowledge through research and scholarship.

Whole Person Education
Upholding the ethos of Whole Person Education, HKBU places dual emphasis on the Arts and Sciences and on teaching and research. While striving towards greater excellence over the past decades, the University has launched various programmes to meet the needs of the community. The University is dedicated to nurturing students to be outstanding leaders who possess all-round talent - spiritual, intellectual, humane, physical, social and professional. HKBU currently has a total of about 8,300 students and five campuses. The University offers an extensive portfolio of undergraduate and taught and research postgraduate programmes as well as associate degrees, diplomas and certificates.

Established by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in August 1999, the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research (HKIMR) conducts research in the fields of monetary policy, banking and finance that are of strategic importance to Hong Kong and the Asia region.

The Institute is funded by grants from the Exchange Fund, with its annual budget subject to the approval of the Exchange Fund Advisory Committee. The Institute's objectives are to:

• Promote research on longer-term and wider policy issues/options of relevance to the monetary and financial development of Hong Kong and the Asia region.
• Foster cooperation and cross-fertilisation of research efforts between academics, analysts and the HKMA research activities, and to establish links and exchanges with research institutes in Hong Kong, the Mainland and the regional economies.
• Facilitate central bank cooperation in research activities and contributing to policy analysis of strategic issues affecting monetary and financial developments in Asia.

The Institute for Financial Markets (IFM) is a non-profit educational foundation founded in 1989 and an independent affiliate of the Futures Industry Association. The IFM focuses its mission in several areas including education, ethics, consultancy, historical data and data services. We support our work through sales of products and services as well as donations and grants. As an industry utility, the IFM serves global securities and futures brokerage firms, market-users, exchanges, regulators, academicians and those who shape and implement public-policy for the financial services industry. Also the IFM in cooperation with Kent State University publishes the Review of Futures Markets and supports the Asian-Pacific Research Symposia. Further details about the Institute can be found at www.theIFM.org

The Journal of Futures Markets is a highly-ranked international finance journal specializing in articles on futures and other derivative securities and markets. The intended audience of the Journal consists of academics, market practitioners, regulators and government policymakers. The Journal employs a double-blind review process to evaluate submitted manuscripts. Both theoretical and empirical studies are published. The Journal was founded in 1981 to promote the conduct and dissemination of scholarly research on futures markets. The mandate of the Journal was soon expanded to include coverage of options, swaps and other derivative products and markets. The Journal of Futures Markets is included in the Social Science Citation Index and published by John Wiley & Sons. More information on the Journal may be found online at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/34434/home.

Yesterday The Kent State Normal School in Kent, Ohio, was created by the Lowry Normal School Bill of 1910, which authorized two new normals - one in the northwestern, another in the northeastern parts of the state. The Lowry bill was the last of numerous measures that had been proposed and defeated over several years to meet the urgent need for professionally trained elementary teachers in the northern half of the state.

Its founding president, John Edward McGilvrey, whom the first Board of Trustees charged to "build the best normal school in the nation", (was) a man of flair and dash, devoted all his abundant intellectual and vital energies to doing that - and much more. He sensed, as early as 1911 that the crest of the normal school movement was subsiding and that the rising tide favored institutions that trained teachers for the state's burgeoning high schools. This meant that Kent would not long endure if it remained a two-year degree-granting normal school. So he planned an alumni association and charted the course and set the coordinates for the school-to become first a college, then to add a liberal arts college, and finally to become a university-all before he had a campus or students or faculty. In his first catalog (October 1912) he disclosed his intention to make Kent a four-year college. In May 17,1935, Governor Martin L. Davey signed House Bill No. 324, making Kent State University.

Lester A. Lefton became Kent State's 11th president in 2006. More than 22,000 students attend the Kent main campus and more than 34,000 in total attend Kent State University, including its seven regional campuses. (From the history of Kent State University, written by William H. Hilldebrand, professor emeritus of English; http://www.kent.edu/About/History/index.cfm)

Today Kent State University ranks among America's top national universities in the 2010 edition of America's Best Colleges by U.S. News Media Group. The exclusive rankings appear in the September issue of U.S. News & World Report and online at www.usnews.com/colleges.

The 2010 America's Best Colleges ranking compares more than 1,400 accredited four-year schools on a set of 15 indicators of excellence. Several key measures of quality were used to determine the rankings, including peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving and graduation rate performance.

Kent State is ranked alphabetically in the third tier of rankings - the top 134-190 public and private institutions - in the Best National Universities category.

"This is great news to receive as we begin the fall semester and celebrate the university's 100th anniversary," said Robert Frank, Kent State's senior vice president and provost. "Our faculty deserves the praise for this recognition, and we will continue to strive for excellence in all academic areas and support student success. We are confident our rankings will become higher as our increases in research funding, alumni giving and student retention are recognized." More information about America's Best Colleges.

The goal of Review of Futures Markets is to provide an academic research journal that brings a unique balance of theory and practice to the derivatives trading and futures market industry. RFM expands the literature of futures, options, and derivatives research with insightful, peer-reviewed articles written by renowned scholars and innovative young researchers. Originally published by the Chicago Board of Trade, RFM resumed publication in 2005 under the auspices of the Department of Finance at Kent State University. RFM also publishes papers presented at the annual Asia-Pacific Futures Research Symposium, now in its 20th year. Papers presented at this symposium by academics and practitioners advance the understanding of global derivatives markets. Review of Futures Markets is published in cooperation with The Institute for Financial Markets, the industry-sponsored nonprofit, educational foundation. The journal is referenced in the Journal of Economic Literature and listed in Cabell&squo;s Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Finance. For more information about the journal, visit the RFM website at www.business.kent.edu/rfm.