Sri Lankan Ambassador speaks at prestigious Young Presidents’ Organisation of Bahrain

Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the Kingdom of Bahrain, Dr. A. Saj U. Mendis, was invited by the President of Young Presidents’ Organisation of Bahrain, popularly known as YPO, to be the Special Keynote/Guest speaker at their General Meeting last week. 

The YPO of Bahrain consists of over 80 leading corporate captains, CEOs/presidents of large corporates, entrepreneurs and business titans from disciplines and trades ranging from finance and banking, manufacturing, services, education, shipping and aviation to IT and ITES, among others.

The YPO is an organisation with 450 Chapters worldwide and has 24,000 members and was founded in 1950 in New York. The YPO is the world’s largest global network of international and multinational business leaders, entrepreneurs and corporats captains.  In order to qualify to become a member of the YPO, a potential member must have become the president or chairman/CEO of a corporate of significance, before the age of 45. Needless to state that to become a member of the YPO, of any Chapter, is extremely stringent and exacting. 

The YPO member-run companies employ over 15 million people and generate $ 6 trillion in annual revenue. Ambassador Dr. Mendis delivered the Guest/Keynote address on ‘The Art of Negotiations/Strategic Negotiations’ to over 70 members of the YPO Chapter of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The 90-minute address consisted of a myriad of negotiations including Leverage Buy Outs (LBO), hostile takeovers, union negotiations and international and trade negotiations and economic diplomacy/negotiations as well as techniques and strategies of noted negotiators. 

The members of the YPO Bahrain Chapter were pleased with the address and the floor was opened for question and answer session. There were a number of questions from the members of the YPO regarding negotiations.

Ambassador Dr. Mendis has specialised in corporate and strategic negotiations and obtained his PhD from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). He is a visiting faculty/guest speaker in a number of universities and academic institutions of repute including NTU of Singapore, Boston University, Graduate Institute of Policy Studies of Tokyo and Harvard, among others.  Dr. Mendis is also a Senior Fellow at Harvard.