Submitted by Kishwer Aziz

Kishwer Aziz, is a Senior Consultant at BankT&D Consulting and is based in the United Kingdom. She has over 30 years of corporate banking experience in five different countries including 11 years as Vice President Citibank’s Financial Institutions and Transaction Services in London and New York. Besides an MBA from IBA, she has a PhD in Finance and also attended AMP at Harvard Business School.

The 40th Anniversary Reunion of the Direct MBA Class Graduating in 1975 was held in Surrey, United Kingdom between July 23rd and 25th 2015. 21 people joined in the 3 day celebrations. The Class members who attended and were they came from is listed below and most were accompanied by their spouse:

- Anjum Iqbal, UK
- Aslam Aziz, UK
- Dennis D’Souza, UK
- Kishwer Shaikh Aziz, UK
- Mukarram Sattar, UK
- Imran Saeed Khan, UK
- Rosamin Hussain Bhanpuri, USA
- Anwar Salimi, USA
- Shahla Qadeer Aly, USA
- Aftab Mustafa Khan, USA
- Javaid Rahmat, Mozambique
- Arif Gulzar, Pakistan

It was just wonderful getting back together after nearly 40 years. The intervening years seemed to just slip away and we were our old selves again, joking and playing practical pranks just as we did 40 years ago. It was truly an unforgettable occasion. Many of us were meeting our classmate's spouse for the very first time but they soon became "one of us". Three days and evenings of informal get together, jelled the group beautifully and there was never a dull moment.

Most people coming from abroad stayed in a hotel in Surrey. On the first day we took a boat cruise on the River Thames followed by a long lunch by the riverside. On the second day we visited the houses of Parliament at Westminster Palace and Westminster Abbey followed by a lunch at the Abbey Restaurant. On the final day we had the reunion lunch which started at noon and went up to 8pm at the home of Kishwer and Aslam Aziz. We shared a presentation of our classmates’ pictures from 1973 to the present day including the pictures of those who could not join us. We also shared the latest IBA presentation sent to us by IBA and this was really well received. There was great appreciation for all the great things happening at our Alma Mater. Four group photos are attached.

We closed the reunion on a high note making plans for the next reunion. Since then we have successfully located all our classmates including Valiullah Zarsov from Iran, Akbar Panjwani in USA (thanks to Shahla Qadeer’s research abilities) and Tariq Owais, who has just been located in Australia.

All the class mates contacted have since voted to have another reunion in the summer of 2016 in Eastbourne, East Sussex, a seaside resort in the UK.