Ambassador Pete Peterson served for 26 years in the United States Air Force with worldwide assignments covering Europe, Africa. Middle East, and Asia. While on his 67th combat mission over North Vietnam in 1966, he was shot down, captured, and spent the next six and a half years as a prisoner of war. Upon retirement from military service in 1981, he engaged in various private business enterprises; in 1985, he joined the faculty of Florida State University as the Director of a specialized psychological treatment program for juvenile offenders; in 1989 he entered US federal polities and was subsequently elected to United States House of Representatives where he served for 3 consecutive terms. Following his resignation from the U.S. Congress in 1997, he was appointed by President Clinton to be the first American ambassador to post-war Vietnam.

Ambassador Peterson is currently President and co-founder of Peterson International, Inc., a private business consulting firm, and is a Senior Director at Stonebridge International, LLC. a global consulting firm based in Washington, DC. He is also the President and co-founder of The Alliance for Safe Children (TASC), a global child injury prevention foundation whose mission is to help reduce child death and disability rates due to preventable injury in developing countries. Ambassador Peterson remains heavily involved in Vietnam affairs through his business consulting work and as Chairman of the US/Vietnam Trade Council and through the philanthropic work of his foundation, TASC.

A well-known personality in Hong Kong, Mr. van der Kamp is the financial columnist of the South China Morning Post and writes the daily Monitor column in the business pages. He took up his present position as a financial columnist in 1998. Prior to his current position, Mr. van der Kamp was chief strategist for ABN Amro Asia (1992-1998), where he achieved consistent rankings in the top-three (Institutional Investor, Asiamoney, Reuters).Mr. van der Kamp has been a resident of Hong Kong since 1979 and combines experience as chief strategist, regional research director, and investment analyst covering Asian markets for, among others, Morgan Stanley Asia, ABN Amro Asia, Sun Hung Kai Securities, and Sassoon Securities. Mr van der Kamp is a native of the Netherlands and was raised in Canada where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of British Columbia.

Senator Larry Pressler was the first Vietnam veteran to be elected to the United States Senate, where he served as a Senator from South Dakota for 18 years (1979-1997). While in the Senate, he was the author of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Chairman of the European and Asian Subcommittees of the Foreign Relations Committee. He is also noted for being the only Member of Congress to refuse to take a bribe from undercover FBI agents and then to report the bribe attempt to the FBI during the Abscam investigations in 1980. He was elected to the House of Representatives from 1975 to 1979. Prior to this he was a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State. He served in the Vietnam War for the U.S. Army (1966 to 1968).

From 2001 to 2007, Mr. Ly Van Luong was the Deputy Director of the Department of Planning and Investment (DPI) for Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). Under the authority of the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, DPI’s major role is to develop the socio-economic plan of HCMC and to promote and support foreign investment. Prior to this position Mr. Ly worked for the HCMC Foreign Affairs Office where he served as Deputy Director (1994 to 2001), Chief Press Officer (1992 to 1994), and Consular Officer (1978 to 1992).

Richard Duncan, previously Global Head of Investment Strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management is a recognized authority on risks for the US Dollar. Richard has worked in the investment industry for more than 20 years for a number of leading institutions, including the World Bank, James Capel, Salomon Brothers, and Indosuez WI Carr. He is also the author of the bestselling book The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures (John Wiley & Sons, 2003, updated 2005), which has been translated into five languages.