On April 28th, the curtain of the UIC 2010 Distinguished Lecture Series was opened with former Chief Executive and Executive Director of Hong Kong Exchanges Mr. Paul Man Yiu Chow's speech themed "Development of the Asian Financial Market". The speech was organized by the Division of Business and Management (DBM) and hosted by Prof. Stella CHO, Dean of DBM. UIC Executive Vice-President Kwok Siutong, Associate Vice President Dr. Wendy Chan,Vice President (Academic) and Dean of UIC Division of Science and Technology Prof. Zee Sze Yong were also in attendance.
Prof. Kwok gave a welcoming address in which he extended appreciation for Mr. Chow's visit and speech. Later after Prof. Stella CHO's introduction, Mr. Paul Chow gave an inspirational speech on the cutting-edge topic of Asian exchanges markets.
Mr. Paul Chow expatiated on comparisons among major world exchanges and key success factors of a financial market. Based on comparisons of market capitalization and turnover among top 10 world and Asian stock exchanges, Mr. Paul illustrated that mainland China, Taiwan, India, Korea and Russia had emerged as a driving force for converting international market from centralization to polarization. He maintained that, in the next decade, the USA would still govern the world in financial area, but China would appear as a big challenge to the USA.
Referring to the overall characteristics of Asian markets, Mr. Chow identified six main parts including mixed cultural background, different degree of market transparency, immature corporate governance, stagnant financial innovation, weak risk management and high level of government intervention. He emphasized that Hong Kong benefited from the geographical proximity to mainland China.
To increase the competitive power of Asian markets, Mr. Chow said, "Market quality is the cornerstone of a successful financial market". Hardware, software, culture and economy were considered as contributory factors to market maturity. He added, "Hardware and software are important and hard to replicate, while culture and environment take years to nurture." He said, economic freedom, attraction of talents, free flow of people and information, level playing field, openness and transparency, intellectual property rights, corporate governance and rules of law would lead to success if Asian markets geared up on them.
In the end, Mr. Chow made an analysis of the opportunities and challenges with which Asian markets were confronted. He suggested that Asian markets take advantage of recent financial crisis to rise in power, advance growth in scale and influence, and make a transition from a follower to a leader. He added that long-range strategic perspective and unremitting efforts were indispensable.
In the wake of the speech, students and teachers were active in communicating with Mr. Chow. Some asked about whether financial crisis could be eliminated in future, Mr. Paul thought it impossible to remove crisis but possible to lessen damages. Some was doubtful about how Hong Kong Exchanges would coexist with Shanghai Stock Exchanges and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges in future. Mr. Paul answered that the three exchanges would cooperate together as well as competing with one another.
Reporter: Huang Shanqing
Photographer and editor: Richard Xu
Media & Public Relations Office
