Michael P. Cangemi.

• Position: VIVA MEXICO FEI - Brief article - Conference notes

FEI's President and CEO Michael P. Cangemi spent his Thanksgiving holiday attending the annual convention of FEI's equivalent in Mexico: Instituto Mexicano de Ejecutivos de Finanzas (IMEF)--pronounced (EE-Meff).

Approximately 300 attendees and an equal number of spouses attended the November 21-25 meeting that was held at a resort. Interestingly, for this group, the tradition is to involve spouses in lunches and activities, which serves to add significantly to developing camaraderie and long-term relationships among the members and spouses, who meet and greet annually.

The conference is supported by a local governor, and even the president of Mexico generally attends the event. Cangemi reports that this year, President Felipe de Jesus Calderon was unable to attend due to an emergency in Guadalajara. Thus, generally, there is much more political interaction in the financial executives' conference than we have in the U.S. Basically, the theme of the conference covered economic development, new legislation, tax discussions...