Dear members,

It is a great privilege to have been elected to the position of Chairman of World Services Group, the first Chairman to come from our 38 countries in the European Region. This appointment follows the very successful recent Annual Meeting in Munich, generously hosted by our friends at Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek. I congratulate our outgoing Chair, Peter Bartlett, on the wonderful job he has done over the last twelve months. He has contributed so much to the well being of the organisation during his tenure and just one example of his legacy is the more than 15% increase in our membership bringing the total number of firms in WSG to 154.

I am very lucky to be taking the helm at a very exciting juncture in the development of WSG. As I stated in Munich, I need all of your support please to help us reach my four goals for the next 12 months:

1) to expand further into the African and Middle Eastern Region - I will be working with support from our board member, Lawrence Anga, and other colleagues in the region.

2) to complete our law firm membership in the Asia Pacific Region - I look forward to working with Peter Bartlett and Suet Fern Lee; - to significantly grow the 26 non-law firm membership working with our Accounting Task Force and our Investment Banking Task Force.

3) to ensure deeper involvement amongst and engagement with member firms in order to foster retention, to enable growth and most importantly for us all to increase referrals to our member firms from other members as well as from other sources who are increasingly using our site as a reference point. We are starting with a number of initiatives including the establishment of Regional Councils in Europe, the US and Latin America and I will be looking particularly to Peter Utterström and Sasha Stepanova in Europe, Steve McKinney in the US and Alberto Lasheras-Shine in Latin America. Our World Bank Project Task Force will be led by John Coman and Steve McKinney and will enable member firms in at least 80 of our jurisdictions to participate in the FDI Project to be rolled out by the World Bank in November. I realise that I have a tremendous job to do by following in the footsteps of Peter Bartlett. However, I look forward to the challenge of the next year and I know that, with your support, we will go at least some way to achieving these goals.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Greene