About

Shadowlands: Adversity as Advantage for CMEs

Welcome to our fourth annual Leaders’ Summit. This year, located in Brisbane, home to many legacy mutual brands.

It’s a record year for the Summit with more delegates, speakers and sessions than in past years, testament to the growing profile of our annual flagship event.

I’m delighted to welcome a number of speakers who have travelled internationally to be here, Yves Morieux (BCG) to talk to us about how to rid our firms of unnecessary and burdensome complexity; Bill Wilson (USA) with the powerful story of American rural co-operation; and Nick Crofts (UK) with the inspiring tale of the corporate turnaround of the beleaguered Co-operative Group.

Our Summit theme this year, Shadowland: Adversity as Advantage for CMEs, looks at how Co-operative and Mutual Enterprises (CMEs) both here and abroad, are managing risk and rising to the opportunities of the ‘disruption era’, even turning it to their advantage. Wherever CMEs operate they often face the same challenges. This is the strength of co-operation – those same adversities can be solved through common solutions.

Over the course of the day, you will have the opportunity to learn from the experiences of CMEs from the UK, USA, China and across the breadth this country as well as sharing your knowledge and expertise with your peers. I’m looking forward to these exchanges today and invite you to take full advantage of the program on offer.

The BCCM was pleased to launch the Parliamentary Friends of Mutuals and Co-ops group at Australian Parliament House in July, showing the sector has strong support across party lines. We welcome Parliamentary colleagues to the Dinner and Summit again this year to talk about how to continue to foster this bipartisanship.

Melina Morrison

Chief Executive Officer, BCCM