WELCOME

Dear Readers,

Thank you for turning to the Los Angeles Times as a trusted partner in your efforts to build a successful, fulfilling life for yourself and your family. The need for timely, on-target, insightful information and analysis that will help you balance the demands of daily life has never been greater. This is particularly true of information related to personal investment decisions.

Your two most valuable resources in this balancing act are time and information. The Times’ unique ability to sort, organize and clarify information on a daily basis puts you in control of both. You will find the same organization and clarity in our third annual Investment Strategies Conference on May 22-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The professionals who deliver personal investment news to you every day in the pages of The Times have put together for you an extraordinary assemblage of programs and panelists, including leading portfolio managers, financial advisors and industry experts from across the country. This special section, which serves as the conference program and supplement, also provides a wealth of valuable investing information throughout its pages.

You should note a couple of important developments for this year’s conference. First, the panel topics have been fine-tuned based on participant feedback from our first two conferences. Second, we have added, in partnership with La Opinion newspaper, a series of Spanish-language investment panels among the 42 panels offered over the two-day event. These changes reflect the importance of dialogue in all that we do at The Times.

If you’re attending the conference, I invite you to continue the dialogue at the Los Angeles Times Pavilion in the Exhibit Hall. There you’ll meet some of the writers, editors and columnists who bring you the daily Business section and Tuesday’s Wall Street, California features.

In print or face-to-face, we want and need to connect with you. The Investment Strategies Conference gives us a dynamic, personal way to share the expertise of the most knowledgeable staff of business journalists in Southern California. As the Investment Strategies Conference and this special section demonstrate, we are continuing to look for new and innovative ways to be an integral part of your success.

MARK H. WILLES

Publisher, Los Angeles Times