These will focus on the skills required to develop best practice in sales and marketing, client relationship management, presentation and negotiation skills and management and leadership. The courses have been developed in direct response to the requirements of the investment banking industry and will deliver the practical skills essential to add value to an international capital markets business.

Increasingly financial regulation, including the recently implemented Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), requires that employees of investment firms demonstrate high levels of competence and the obligation to ensure that employees meet these standards falls on the senior management of financial services firms. ICMA will address this obligation by providing skills training directly dedicated to the needs of the international capital markets, drawing on best market practice and delivered by faculty of internationally recognised business skills trainers.

In line with its 40 year experience of setting market standards, ICMA's skills training will emphasise ethical standards, ensuring customers are treated fairly, and promoting an environment of transparency and trust, both with customers and colleagues in the work place. Conflicts of interests in different investment banking work streams will also be identified and addressed. Classes will be limited in size, highly interactive, with a focus on individual exercises and role plays to develop key skills.

The first public ICMA Skills courses; Successful Sales, Mastering Mandates, Management and Mentoring, will run in the latter half of 2008, detailed information is available from the ICMA website. ICMA Skills courses can also be delivered on an in-house basis and targeted to suit a particular firm's needs.

ICMA Skills compliments the high quality executive education programmes that ICMA ha offered to its membership and the market at large for over three decades, via the ICMA Centre at the Universityyy of Reading.