Update: IAME2019 Conference to be held in Athens Greece

Dear fellow IAME members,

On the 12th of July 2018, Dr. Sérgio Sampaio Cutrim communicated to me “the actual impossibility of holding the IAME 2019 in São Luís (MA), Brazil, as it was proposed and accepted by IAME” in 2017. He very much regretted this situation, which was imposed on the organizing team by unforeseen changes in the economic resources available the Federal University of Maranhão for organising the Conference along the lines that the bidding proposal had detailed. The IAME Council obviously regretted the situation but had no choice but to accept this decision. I personally want to thank the Brazilian team for the efforts made.

As you will recall, and in line with Article 44 of our IAME constitution, we had called for bids to host IAME 2019 in early 2017. We had received two bids, one from Greece (Athens University of Economics and Business) and one from Brazil (Federal University of Maranhão). We had set up a working group, in line with our applicable guidelines, which provided a comparative analysis of the two bids. Both bids were considered good proposals. After both teams had presented their bids to Council during the IAME Council meeting in 2017, a majority of votes were casted for Brazil.

After the withdrawal of the offer from the Federal University of Maranhão, and the confirmation by the team from Athens University of Economics and Business that their bid to organise IAME 2019 Conference along the lines of its initial proposal was still valid, submitted in line with our constitution and guidelines in 2017, the IAME Council voted again and agreed to accept the bid submitted by Athens University of Economics and Business.

I would like to share with you also that we had discussions on the Council if a new bidding process could and should be initiated, but it was considered that this a) would not have been in line with our own constitution and guidelines, b) it would not be fair to the team from Greece who had submitted in time and in line with the standard process and kindly agreed to take on the task at a much shorter notice, and c) it would not be practical and in fact detrimental for the conference and our IAME, as any further delay could have negative impacts on the conferences in 2019 and 2020.

I am thus pleased to announce that the IAME 2019 Conference will take place in Athens, Greece and will be organised by the Athens University of Economics and Business, with the organising committee chaired by Prof. Manolis Kavussanos.

Kind Regards

Jan Hoffmann

IAME President