On Monday, Casa America, the renowned Madrid's palace, was the venue of the official opening of the 4th annual congress of the Spanish Association of Minority Shareholders of Listed Companies (AEMEC) and the 3rd conference of the International Financial Litigation Network (IFLN). At the invitation of organizers, both events were traditionally also attended by the PanSlovenian Investors' & Shareholders' Association (VZMD) President, Mr. Kristjan Verbič, which marked the beginning of the this year's sixth tour of the VZMD international business-investor programs: Invest to Slovenia (investo.si) and International Investors' Network (invest-to.net). 

To this end, the AEMEC and IFLN organizations designed a joint program, within which they provided countless interesting panels in two days which were attended by over 200 prominent guests, representatives of European institutions and politics, the economy and heads of influential law firms from all over the world. The introductory speech was delivered by the organizer of the event, Mrs. Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the former European Commissioner, and Mr. Javier Cremades, the President of IFLN, AEMEC Secretary General and co-founder of one of the most influential Spanish law firms Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo, and Mr. Daniel Calleja, Director-General of the Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General at the European Commission.

The speakers from Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and USA talked about multiple legal proceedings which they had come up against as investors representatives. On this occasion Mr. Verbič, as a part of the discussion led by the former President of the European Parliament. Mr. Jose Maria Gil Robles, stressed the importance of trust of investors and anew brought attention to the cases of expropriated investors in banks, where the former holders of bonds and shares of Slovenian banks belong. 

Exactly the problems of expropriated and double-crossed bank shareholders have recently reinforced, albeit effective, long-standing collaboration between VZMD and AEMEC and IFLN. The VZMD President has, on arguable grounds, pointed out the problems of cancellation of shares and bonds already at the international conferences of the World Federation of Investors (WFI) and IFLN in 2013, when visiting the Spanish Parliament and the Central Bank, at the last year's IFLN conference in New York he exhibited the activities related to investors expropriations and which have already been initiated and are being planned by the VZMD.

The conference attendees also discussed about new raising capital models such as "crowdfunding" as well as new communication models, connections and relationships among individual investors. The VZMD President joined the working lunch at the headquarters of Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo,  where the Executive Board of IFLN mapped out the strategy of future activities. In the evening, the most prominent guests and participants headed for the renown palace El Escorial for informal gathering. The high visibility conference ended last night, with the prize-awarding ceremony for the »Shareholders-friendly Award«, which was received by the Repsol company. Such awards were also received by the two Slovenian companies in 2011 and 2012 (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO from the Ljubljana Skyscraper (Nebotičnik) and EXCLUSIVE VIDEO from the Ljubljana Castle). The award "Best initiative for the Minority, for the politic involvement with the shareholders" was received by Iberdrola company, whereas the special academic award was received by prof. Gaudencio Esteban from the University of Madrid.

Following the visit to Madrid Mr. Verbič is setting off for Baku, where he will, at the invitation of the organizers, attend the 14th session of the General meeting of the Board of Directors of the International Fund for Cooperation and Partnership of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea(BSCSIF).