On 17 January 2013, I moderated a 90 minutes panel discussion on the Hong Kong listing mechanism at HKEx’s 2nd whole-day conference on “Raising capital in Hong Kong”.

The conference, at which which I already presented in November 2011, was organised jointly with the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, and was primarily aimed at giving European corporates the possibility of gaining a deep understanding of the Hong Kong market, of the internationalization of the RMB, to meet investors from the region, as well as to uncover new business opportunities.

Some 150 people were in attendance for this session, including a mix of corporates, financial advisers, investment bankers, private equity firms, consultants, legal advisers and investors.

I can be seen on the following picture (in the centre, photo credit: HKEx). The other panelists from left to right were:

– Christopher W. Betts, Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom;
– Alan Glen, Partner, Deloitte China National Public Offerings Group;
– Alexis Adamczyk, Co-Head of Equity Capital Markets, Asia-Pacific, HSBC;
– Jonathan Penkin, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs; and
– John Lydon, Managing Director, COO, Corporate Finance, Deutsche Bank.

Other highlights of the conference included:

– opening remarks by C.K. Chow, Chairman of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited;

– a panel on Europe, Hong Kong and China, with Julia F.Y. Leung, Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, The Government of The Hong Kong SAR; Alicia Garcia-Herrero, Chief Economist for Emerging Markets, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria; and Vicent Piket, Head of the Office of the E.U. to Hong Kong and Macau (moderated by Beth Smits, Head of Corporate Affairs Asia-Pacific at SWIFT);

– a presentation on raising capital in Hong Kong (equities and bond issuance) by Rebecca Smith, Co-Head of Issuer & Client Services, Global Markets, at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited;

– a panel on the perspective of Asian investors (moderated by Rebecca Smith), with Marshall Nicholson, Managing Director at China International Capital Corporation (and a former colleague); David Smith, Head of Corporate Governance at Aberdeen Asset Management; and Conrad Tsang, Managing Director at Baring Capital;

– a workshop on RMB financing (moderated by Michael Chan, Assistant Vice President, Issuer & Client Services, at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited) with Bryan Chan, Co-Head, Equity, Fixed Income and Currency, Global Markets, at the Hong Kong Exchange; Teresa Ko, Chairman, China at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer; and Lee Wong, Director, Equity Capital Markets, at Bank of China International; and

– closing remarks by Jens-Erik Olsen, Chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.