Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/594552
Events 53 maltatoday, Sunday, 1 november 2015 Intercontinental Malta hosts 'M&I Forum Europe'a InterContinental Malta recently hosted the au- tumn 'Meetings and Incentives Forum' (M&I Forum), taking part were 300 international meeting industry pro- fessionals from across the globe. The first Meeting & Incentive Forum took place in London in 2006 with the aim of discuss- ing fresh approaches to business marketing. The forums are trade events for destinations to showcase their offerings. This year, Malta joined other destinations in- cluding Vienna, Dubai, Amsterdam and Prague in hosting one of these forums. Martin van Kan, Area General Manager Malta said, "We were very excited to show the fantastic new products recently launched at Inter- Continental Malta. Our wonderful islands are perfectly suited to host meeting and incentive groups of all sizes, and we are sure this forum will bring together worldwide suppliers and planners, all of whom will open up new business opportunities and give attendees total confidence in our destination." A wide range of suppliers were rep- resented at each event – including hotels, conference centres and des- tination management companies. In addition to the forum workshops, team building activities, dinners and cocktail receptions there were further networking opportunities for the suppliers to interact with the 300 buyers in attendance. The event gave guests at the forum the opportunity to experience Inter- Continental Malta's newly launched luxury suites, Club InterContinental lounge as well as one of the largest unrestricted plenary room in the Mediterranean, the InterContinent- al Arena Conference Centre. For further information on Inter- Continental Malta: www.interconti- nental/icmalta McDonald's launches McHappy Day fundraising campaign in aid of RMHC and Inspire As part of its continuous work to raise funds for children in need, McDonald's has announced its McHappy Day national charity event to mark World Children's Day. Now in its 12th edition, McHappy Day aims to raise funds to build another Inspire Learning Centre in Malta. "The number of children and young adults who are failing in core subjects is on the increase," explained Inspire's CEO An- tonello Gauci. "This is sometimes even worse because of the socio-economic situation that children find themselves in. These sessions will therefore focus on improv- ing the skills required to help them perform better in Math- ematics and English. Interven- tion will be delivered for free, to children who are identified as having specific and non - spe- cific learning difficulties and come from a problematic social and educational background." Throughout November Mc- Donald's customers will be en- couraged to photograph their hand in a sock and share their photos on Facebook tagging them as #thehelpingsock. Mc- Donald's socks will be available for sale in restaurants. For every picture uploaded McDonald's will donate €1 to- wards the construction of a Learning Centre as part of its Ronald McDonald House Char- ities (RHMC) global initiative. The Learning Centre will pro- vide support to a large number of young people with learning difficulties or disabilities and others who come from a trou- bled social background. Apart from providing formal educa- tion, the Learning Centre will offer nurturing and caring edu- cation to help these children lead more rewarding lifestyles. "McHappy Day is our largest fundraising event that brings together all of our restaurants for a good cause," Victor Te- desco, Managing Director of Premier Restaurants Malta, the operator of McDonald's, said. "There will also be money boxes encouraging customers to contribute further to this important cause in all our res- taurants." "The Ronald McDonald House Charities (RHMC) project fo- cuses on providing stability and resources to families every- where. Established internation- ally in 1974, RHMC has helped address these needs every day, with over 305,000 volunteers and staff around the world. By partnering with Inspire, we aim to raise enough funds to estab- lish a new Learning Centre in Malta that will focus entirely on the local community," Mal- colm Booker, Chairman RMHC (Malta) added. Last year's campaign raised €28,000 for L-istrina as hun- dreds of employees, local per- sonalities and McDonald's customers uploaded photos supporting the 'share a smile' campaign on Facebook. Over the past 11 years, McHappy Day has raised more than €250,000 for charity. On November 28 McDonald's Malta will join the global Mc- Donald's McHappy Day cel- ebrations to raise further funds and awareness for children's causes. special events will be held in McDonald's restaurants throughout the day. For further details visit the McDonald's Malta Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ McDonaldsMT or contact Liza Bianco on Liza.Bianco@ mt.mcd.com GO welcomes MCA's clarifications on European Commission Broadband Reports REAFFIRMING its commitment to offer best in class communications services, at the best value, GO plc welcomes the recent clarifications published by the Malta Commu- nications Authority [MCA] re- garding the European Commis- sion's three reports on broadband quality, prices and coverage, and to subsequent articles about these reports in certain sections of the print media in Malta. GO endorses MCA's observa- tion that competitive conditions in Malta have actually led to a consistent decline in prices paid by Maltese consumers for broad- band services. This is confirmed in the European Commission's own Report, which includes Malta amongst countries recording a drop in prices across all bands of broadband products. Unfortunately, subsequent ar- ticles in certain sections of the media have focused on pricing of broadband products that are ei- ther no longer popular in the Mal- tese market, such as standalone broadband, or high value products that are still in their infancy and that will continue to decrease in price with more take-up, such as very high speed broadband. Moreover, as correctly pointed out by the MCA, the Commis- sion's Report does not take suffi- ciently into account the limitless monthly download limits that an operator like GO offers across most of its broadband services. In fact, GO's Triple play offers, are by far the most preferred by Maltese consumers. Additionally, the Report meas- ures prices based on the Purchas- ing Power Parity (PPP) concept, not the actual prices being paid by Maltese consumers. With regards to the Commis- sion's Report on the quality of broadband services in Malta, GO would like to clarify that the Commission's Report refers ex- clusively to the network of one of its competitors, and not GO's. In fact, not a single graph in the 188-page report refers to xDsL or FTTx measurements for GO. As stressed by the MCA itself, also worth noting are the Com- mission's other Report about Malta's impressively high levels of broadband coverage compared with the rest of Europe. The Commission's Report highlights the fact that ''in 2014, Malta was the only country to report virtually complete broadband cov- erage across the different technology combinations on both rural and national level." Comparative figures further demonstrate how Malta outperforms the EU aver- age in almost all technologies. such coverage, even in a country as geographically compact as Mal- ta, could only have been achieved through significant year-on-year investment by the telecom net- work operators in Malta and often at appreciable commercial risk. A GO spokesperson said, ''GO is proud to be the biggest investor in the telecoms sector in Malta, with consistently high capital ex- penditure in fixed line and mo- bile telephony, broadband and television. Committed to Malta's future, during these last 5 years alone, GO has invested over €100 million in its networks and serv- ices, putting it in the list of top investors overall in the Maltese economy.'' ''GO is still investing heavily in next generation networks: it will shortly be commercially launching the only 4G mobile service sup- ported by a real fibre infrastruc- ture and will continue expanding its cutting edge fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network that will have reached over 25,000 homes by the end of this year. This will deliver the highest broadband speeds and excellent dependability to the consumer. Thanks to this infra- structure, GO will ensure Malta retains its position among the very top EU Member states in terms of telecoms connectivity for the foreseeable future.'' Malta Stock Exchange announces plans to expand THE Malta stock Exchange (MsE) will soon be forming three working committees aimed at expanding and enhancing its business devel- opment objectives in 2016 and be- yond. The Exchange's Chairman Joseph Portelli said that he and the Board are keen on developing new product lines that can take the Exchange and Malta's Financial Industry to new heights. He said he is looking for- ward to working with the Finance Ministry and Exchange's executive team to develop strategies for devel- oping three keys areas and to work with stakeholders to enhance Mal- tese Capital Markets. The committees to be formed are the Islamic Finance Committee, the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Committee, and the China Listing Committee. The Committees will be chaired by the Exchange's Chairman, will meet regularly, and be staffed with internal and external experts who can develop guidelines and proc- esses for exploring how the MsE can penetrate and excel within certain strategic areas. For example, the RE- IT Committee will explore the feasi- bility of introducing these securities to the Maltese markets to help lo- cal companies finance existing and planned real-estate projects. The China Listing Committee will explore how Chinese companies can be prompted to dual list in Malta affording them passporting rights within the European Union. The Ex- change is also exploring introducing local stakeholders to novel financial securities such as preferred securi- ties and Project Revenue Bonds. some members of these commit- tees will come from a recent initia- tive undertaken by the Exchange to form an External Advisory Board, which is made up of six profes- sionals from outside the Exchange. Portelli said that he welcomes and encourages input and constructive advice on how new product lines and markets can be explored, and how operational processes can be improved. He said, "Malta's recent economic growth has been the envy of Europe, and a robust local capital mar- ket will only fuel further growth. simply we need to open the Exchange to new and innovative ideas." Currently two new busi- ness initiatives are close to fruition and will be rolled out by Q1 2016. The MsE will be introducing Pros- pects, a domestic capital market plat- form designed to cater for small and Medium sized Enterprises (sMEs) looking to raise cost-effective capi- tal in the area of three to five million euro. Prospects can also address succession-planning concerns. The Exchange is also planning Roadshow trips to Dubai and to countries within sub-saharan Af- rica to promote Malta as a destina- tion to dual list companies in these growing emerging markets and at- tract companies falling within the Islamic Finance framework. There is also significant interest being reg- istered from Italian and spanish in- termediaries in the Maltese capital market – all the above initiatives au- gur well for the continued develop- ment of the Maltese Exchange, both domestically and internationally.