Dear NFA Members and Guests,

Welcome to the 36th NFA Annual Meeting and Conference in the vibrant city of Montréal, Canada. We are thrilled to have you join us and hope this year's conference will be both engaging and informative.

This year, we set a record with nearly 1,400 paper submissions. In response to this great interest, we have organized a program featuring 130 papers across 42 regular sessions and 2 panel sessions. We have also dedicated four sessions to PhD work, showcasing 12 student papers. To further highlight the research of young scholars, we've added a PhD poster session with 13 additional papers from current PhD candidates. Special thanks to Simon Gervais (Duke) for his diligent efforts in organizing the PhD sessions.

Our paper review process involved a two-step assessment. First, one of our 84 Associate Program Chairs pre-screened each paper. Then, an average of five independent reviewers per paper conducted in-depth evaluations. We are immensely grateful to our program committee of 438 members for their thorough reviews and valuable feedback.

This meeting highlights our sustained growth and improvement, evidenced by more submissions, greater participation in reviews, higher attendance, and increased selectivity. We are pleased that this year's program balances a strong Canadian presence with a growing global scope.

The highlight of our conference will be the keynote speech by Professor Wei Jiang, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance at Emory University, on Saturday, September 21.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our NFA co-presidents, Yelena Larkin and Lilian Ng, and the NFA board of directors for their guidance over the past year. We also thank our sponsors and exhibitors for their continued and invaluable support.

Lastly, we look forward to seeing you at our two evening events: the Eventus Reception on Friday, September 20, at the Centre de conférence Claude-Séguin (A.373), and the reception-dinner on Saturday, September 21, at the Ruelle des Fortifications, an iconic landmark in Vieux-Montréal.

We wish you a productive and enjoyable conference in Montréal and encourage you to contribute to future conferences as reviewers, discussants, or session chairs.

Best regards,
Daniel Andrei and Vincent Grégoire