Business & Money | Monday 6 April, 2015 8:51 am |

- Mr. Adnan Ahmed Yousif, President and Chief Executive of Al Baraka Banking Group BSC (ABG) and former President of the Union of Arab Banks, was invited to co-chair Financing Growth Taskforce of Business 20 (B20) headed by Turkey at the present time. This invitation was based on the prestigious financial and banking position of Mr. Adnan, where in addition to his position in the Group, he currently chairs nine boards of ABG's units. Mr. Adnan chaired also Union of Arab Banks over two election terms (2007 - 2013), in addition to a number of professional institutions, during which he made a lot of economic, financial and banking outstanding contributions that qualified him to win a lot of international and Arab distinguished awards. It is the first time that the B20 invited Arab banker to co-chair one of the six taskforces it have.
On this occasion, Mr. Adnan Ahmed Yousif said: "I would like to express my deep pleasure and pride in my selection to co-chair Financing Growth taskforce of B20, as the first Bahraini and Arab Banker to be selected for this position, which confirms the influential and prominent role being played by the bankers leaders of Bahrain and Arab banks at the global level. As I pay tribute to Bahrain’s embracement for a deep-rooted banking experience, which created rich and deep banking experiences, I am determined to use these experiences to promote and strengthen the integrity of the global financial system and sustainable development in the world as a whole. "
It is worth mentioning that after the establishment of the G20 on the back of the outbreak of the global crisis in 2008, the G20 has sought to incorporate policy contributions from an ever-broader cross-section of society, which are organized under five groups: Business 20, Labor 20, Civil 20, Think 20, and Youth 20.
The Business 20 (B20) outreach group is an influential platform bringing together business leaders from G20 economies, and advocates for critical issues for enterprises. Each year, the B20’s principal task is to facilitate exchanges between business communities from different countries and to develop consensuses around critical issues for businesses and then presenting them to the G20. The B20 has been instrumental in providing links between global policymakers—including governments and relevant international institutions—and business communities around the world.
The first official business summit took place in Korean G20 Presidency in 2010, and was convened during subsequent French, Mexican, Russian, and Australian G20 presidencies and recently Turkey. Since the first business summit, the business community has presented more than 400 recommendations to G20 leaders.
Turkey is currently chairing the B20 since December 2014, which consists of six taskforces: Trade, Infrastructure and Investment, Financing Growth, Employment, Anti-corruption, SMEs and Entrepreneurship.
The Co-Chair’s roles and responsibilities are to provide suggestions to coordinating chairs on taskforce subjects, to contribute to taskforce meetings and discussions with comments, ideas, to share knowledge and expertise gained and to help developing consensuses around these subjects and then presenting them to the presidency of the B20. The Financing Growth taskforce is one of the main taskforces of the B20, since Financing Growth is critical for investment and necessary to fuel sustained global growth. As a continuation of the previous works of B20, B20 Turkey will continue to concentrate on improving and strengthening the current global financial architecture, specifically with respect to the governance of international finance institutions and the spillover effects of national policy decisions on other markets. Furthermore, B20 Turkey will seek to increase and diversify the access to equity for small- to medium-size businesses, and improve the financing structure of the corporate world towards a better balance of debt and equity financing.