American Academy of Financial Management opens in KSA

The opening of the latest international chapter coincides with the appointment of the Managerial and Financial Training Centre in Jeddah as the Academy's formal education provider/partner there.

The opening of the Jeddah operation caps off a couple of years of frantic growth and expansion for the American Academy globally, including the establishment of new offices and training centers in Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore, Malta and three new offices in China. The founder and President of AAFM, Dr. George Mentz commented, "2006 was by far our most successful year in our 10 year history. As we continue to add new chapters and aggressively increase our membership in 2007 we are looking to consolidate our global position as one of the fastest growing professional associations in the finance discipline."

In respect to the new activity in the Gulf, Prof Brett King, the CEO -- International for AAFM, commented: "Our relationship with the Managerial and Financial Training Centre is indicative of our strong commitment to marketing alliances and our core development of both certificate training programs in the public arena and tailored in-house programs for enterprise". King also commented "The MFTC team joins our alliance of more than 500 universities and training partners worldwide. Their strong commitment to improving industry standards in the Kingdom is a credit to their management team and makes them an ideal partner for AAFM."

Hanan Al Attas, Chairman of the Managerial and Financial Training Center, attended the ceremony to sign and announce the new AAFM alliance. Ms. Hanan commented, "Close association with the best practice management associations, methodologies and systems is a key strategy for MFTC to ensure Saudi professionals is globally relevant and certified." Dr. Ali M. Albaity a well known banker was also on hand to accept a nomination to the GCC board of standards for the AAFM.

MFTC has taken this positive step to be in line with the growth in numbers of the investment companies that has been licensed by Capital Market Authority (CMA). And also to accommodate the needs of the training in banks and companies both commercial & investment, as well as providing specialized program in finance & management for all other companies in the Kingdom with the highest quality standards.

Ms. Siham Khan, Marketing Manager of MFTC further commented:

"This partnership of MFTC with AAFM would reduce the training costs for all local companies and banks in the Kingdom by at least half and there will be no need to send trainees abroad for such training programs."

MFTC & AAFM would jointly provide public training programs as well as In-house training, including tailored made programs to suit the specific requirements of the financial institutions , banking industry as well as investment companies etc...

The American Academy of Financial Management is a Professional Association Board of Standards established in the United States in accord with the Ibanez Supreme Court decision.

It has members in over 145 countries and works with more than 500 training partners worldwide. The Off-shore international headquarters was moved to Dubai in 2005, but with liaison offices in Hong Kong, Kuwait, Singapore, San Francisco, Monterey, New Orleans, Melbourne, Beijing, the Caribbean, India and Europe, AAFM is fast becoming the global professional association of choice for financial practitioners, and has over 45.000 members world wide.

MFTC was established in 2004 and has been continuously providing affiliated programs like CMA, CTP, and ACI with the highest quality standard in both material & trainer, and has achieved recognitions from many local banks, companies and other institutions locally and internationally."