The conference was conceived with the objective of exploring the efficiency of the financial sector and its contribution to the economic growth, which in turn, is contingent upon the depth and diversity of the financial institutions, markets and instruments. The undertaken discussions were on four major themes: Investment Decision, Financial Markets and Foreign Direct Investment, Portfolio Selection and Special Economic Zones.

Mr Roopen Roy, Managing Director of Deloitte and Touche Consulting India Private Ltd and BOG, IIT Kharagpur was the Chief Guest of the conference and Prof GS Sanyal, Ex-Director of IIT Kharagpur and Adviser to VGSOM, was the Guest of Honour. Other guests included Prof Damodar Acharya, Director IIT Kharagpur, Prof S Srinivasan, Dean VGSOM, Prof G Sinha, VGSOM and Prof Rudra P Pradhan, Convenor of FFMI-08.

The details of keynote presentations are as follows:
1. Professor Arnab K. Laha, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India
Topic: Valuation of Apparent Temperature based Weather Derivatives

2. Professor Ganapati Panda, Former Director (National Institute of Technology, Durgapur) and Dean, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India
Topic: Financial Forecasting Using Soft and Evolutionary Computing Tools

3. Prof. Binay Bhusan Chakrabarti, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India
Topic: Risk Management: An Integrated and Cross-Border Approach

4. Prof. Saurabh Agarwal, Vice Chairman, Indian Institute of Finance, New Delhi, India
Topic: Venture Finance Model for HR Capacity Building in Global Dis-equilibrium

Out of the papers received, 118 papers were selected to be presented in the conference. The papers were from various institutes from India and across the globe, which includes Cleveland State University, USA, Bloomsburg University, USA, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia; Deakin University, Australia; University of Dhaka, Bangladesh; Botswana University, Botswana; IIM Ahmedabad; IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow; IIM Indore; IIM Kozikode; IISc Banaglore; ISB Hyderabad; IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur; IIT Mumbai; IIT Madras; IIF New Delhi; NIT Rourkela; NIT Allahabad; NIT Durgapur, Calcutta University, University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University, Burdwan University; Utkal University, Vidyasagar University. Below are the details of award winning presentations:

Best Paper Award
A. Faculty Category (2 Prizes)

First Prize a

Authors: Arnab Kumar Laha, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India and Shrey Kohli, St. Stephenas College, New Delhi, India
Topic: Valuation of Apparent Temperature based Weather Derivatives

Second Prize a
Authors: Arindam Chaudhuri, Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India; Debraj Datta, Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, Kolkata, India and Mauha Datta, International School of Business and Media, Kolkata, India.
Topic: Discovering Stock Price Prediction Rules of Bombay Stock Exchange Using Rough Fuzzy Multi Layer Perception Networks

B. Student Category (1 Prize)

First Prize (Shared) a
Authors: Sujata Kar, Ex-student, IIT Kanpur and Faculty, COER School of Management, Roorkee, India
Topic: Modelling Growth in Call Money Rate: A Periodic Perspective

Authors: Devlina Chatterjee, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and Chiranjit Mukhopadhyay, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Topic: Common Factors Underlying Proxy Measures of Liquidity