Investment banking revenues are of course a little slower right now for banks.   But they need to keep their conferences going because it drives their institutional trading business.  So they are looking to improve the economics.

One trend we are seeing come into play is charging non-clients to attend.  For years, banks didn’t mind too much who attended their conferences.   Notionally they were for Clients only, but they didn’t go to much effort to keep non-clients from attending.   Now they are looking to charge non- clients to come – thus making them a profit-center.  Non-clients may still not get 1-on-1 meetings.

We’ve had to do a fair bit of work on MeetMax to accommodate the  need for this.