DECEMBER IS A UNIQUE TIME that combines year end and holiday celebrations with reflection and resolutions for the New Year. This season will be no different at CFA Society Toronto as we celebrate the contributions of our CEO, Peter Jarvis, who now transitions into retirement. As we enter 2014 and a new chapter, we will welcome our new CEO and the exciting changes that will surely follow.

This past autumn we focused on some new initiatives, including the integration of automated response (polling) devices at our 56th Annual Forecast Dinner. This allowed for the thousand-plus Toronto-area investment professionals and their guests to voice their outlooks for the global economy, international markets, and politics alongside speakers Martin H. Barnes, A. Gary Shilling, and Barry L. Ritholtz. The night’s polling trended toward predictions of slow growth over the next five years. Only time will tell if our cautious guests and keynote speakers were correct.

This past October we paid tribute to excellence in industry reporting at the inaugural presentation of our Financial Journalism Awards. Finalists and winners came together at our 2013–2014 Media Contact Directory launch and reception, where Dan Bortolotti was named Journalist of the Year and MoneySense magazine was named Publication of the Year. This initiative will be an annual event, and in the coming years we expect even more members of the financial press to compete head to head in the promotion of education and ethics in financial reporting.

We anticipate an exciting programming calendar for 2014 and are thrilled to kick off the conference season with our Professional Development Day on 30 January, where members can elevate their career expertise. Further information will be forthcoming on our annual Pension and Wealth Conferences and our new Equity Conference.

We also expect that our programming will evolve in support of The Future of Finance initiative of CFA Institute as the year unfolds. We will share more information on this initiative with you in future issues of The Analyst.

Finally, on behalf of CFA Society Toronto and our Board of Directors, I would like to extend warm holiday greetings to our all of our members and volunteers, whom we depend on every day to provide ethical leadership within the financial industry today, tomorrow, and beyond.