Hong Kong Business Awards 2017
A nsiderac
Hong Kong Bus ness awards 2017
Best International Convention and Exhibition Centre 2017 & Award for Excellence in Convention and Exhibition Facilities g
We caught up with Ms Monica Lee-MĂźller, Managing Director of HML to find out more about the firm and explore the secrets behind its success so far.
Also in this issue: Best for Customised Asian Hedge Funds & Specialist Alternative Investment Firm of the Year 2017 – Gen2 Partners Limited
Editor’s Note
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Welcome to the 2017 Hong Kong Business Hong Kong’s strong trading links places it in a powerful position in the global economy, giving businesses a strength and resilience that is envied across all sectors and industries. Its economic freedom is regularly ranked as one of the highest in the world, and this is thanks to the hard work, dedication and professionalism of the businesses that thrive there.
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The APAC Insider Hong Kong Business Awards 2017 seek out the very best firms, departments, individuals and initiatives to celebrate their performance over the past twelve months.
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Contents
, K 4. Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (Management) Limited Best International Convention and Exhibition Centre 2017 & Award for Excellence in Convention and Exhibition Facilities 8. Queenie Foong Kwin Tan Best Parent Education and Support Services 10. Gen2 Partners Limited Best for Customised Asian Hedge Funds& Specialist Alternative Investment Firm of the Year 2017 11. Gaw Capital Partners Best for Property Investments and Development Funds 11. elitesco Communication Limited Award for Excellence in Financial and Legal Translation
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Best International Convention and Exhibition Centre 2017 & Award for Excellence in Convention and Exhibition Facilities Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (Management) Limited (HML) is a professional private management and operating company responsible for providing day to day management for the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC), where it oversees administration, marketing, booking, scheduling, event co-ordination, maintenance and security. It also manages food and beverage operations at the HKCEC, including restaurants and catering services. We caught up with Ms Monica Lee-Müller, Managing Director of HML to find out more about the firm and explore the secrets behind its success so far. Drawing on its vast experience, HML provides world-class services for users, visitors and guests of the HKCEC, a venue which has been consistently awarded the title of ‘Best Convention and Exhibition Centre in Asia’ by leading industry professionals. Over 1,100 events are held at the HKCEC every year, including exhibitions, conferences, corporate meetings, entertainment events, seminars and banquets. These events contribute significant economic benefits to the city, and help raise the international image of Hong Kong.
The award-winning 306,000 square metre HKCEC, first opened in 1988, offers 91,500 square metre of rentable space. An iconic Hong Kong landmark, the HKCEC is located on a prime waterfront site in the central business district of Hong Kong. It is owned by the Hong Kong SAR Government and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. It is now home to four of the world’s largest and seven of Asia’s largest trade fairs of its kind, and many international conferences. Over the years, HML continues to emphasize quality and value added services. On-going facility upgrade includes free WiFi service and 4G network,
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CCTV and security system. With HML’s initiative and investment, the HKCEC was one of the first venues in Asia to provide WiFi service free of charge in 2005. The free HKCEC Wi-fi service was upgraded to cope with increasing demand of information technology and use of mobile devices. The HKCEC’s WiFi can facilitate up to 5,000 concurrent users at any one time in general, while the mobile phone network has been switched from 3G to 4G. HML began a 3-year project last year to enhance the Centre’s overall security levels, involving a massive upgrade to the existing CCTV system, access control system, and security control rooms, to create an even safer
environment for users. Monica outlines how these developments are in line with the firm’s mission, as well as explaining the techniques it employs to achieve it. “Here at HML, our mission is to consistently deliver superb customer care through the provision of world class facilities and services with a responsive and enthusiastic team of professionals guided by a high level of integrity, pride, passion and industry knowledge. “To ensure all staff members aim to achieve the same goals, the corporate strategy starts at staff recruitment and development –
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Best International Convention and Exhibition Centre 2017 & Award for Excellence in Convention and Exhibition Facilities
CMYK
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we make sure we hire people who are customer oriented and have good communication skills. Mission and company goals are clearly communicated with staff members of all levels. Business development and management directions are shared at regular staff meetings and other internal communication channels. Identified talents are offered development opportunities. Above all, customer feedback is constantly attended and followed up to meet the changing requirements. We record feedbacks received from all channels and relevant Departments have to go through them regularly to identify services gap for improvement.” Operating in such a competitive market, HML has worked hard to target the luxury end of the market in order to differentiate itself from its competitors, as Monica discusses. “Strategically, we target upmarket events and niche topics, like art exhibitions and luxury product shows. Understanding of the market trends as well as organisers’ needs, sensitivity to global and regional economy, up-to-date analysis, future projections, and in depth market research are all keys to secure sustainable new exhibitions. For example, a few top art exhibitions and related events have already become regular items on the HKCEC’s event calendar, namely, Art Basel, Affordable Art Fair, Fine Art Asia, Ink Asia, Sotheby’s Spring Auctions and Exhibitions, Christie’s Hong Kong Spring Auctions, and International Antiques Fair. Art appreciation and collection are flourishing in Asia with growing spending power and investment interest and collection. “Organisers and event attendees of these high end exhibitions look for a total experience and quality, such as food and beverage, technology and logistics management etc. Hospitality for exhibitors and visitors with high spending power of Art Basel in March plays an important part of their overall
experience. Visitors to Art Basel in Hong Kong are from around the world. It became a big challenge for the HML’s food & beverage team to accommodate the needs of the visitors with so diverse backgrounds. “To achieve this, HML’s F&B team made extraordinary efforts in providing tailor made menus and services for the attendees of this fair. HML’s event managers, chefs and catering service staff worked closely with Art Basel Hong Kong’s team and F&B consultant to offer a range of Asian and Western cuisines across 11 eateries. Among which, 10 were tailored and temporarily built inside the exhibition halls and in the concourse areas. There were also four champagne trolleys serving on the fair ground. “In addition, HML’s F&B team and Art Basel Hong Kong’s team started to discuss the concept and develop the menus as early as August 2016. In view of the portfolios of the exhibitors and visitors, the teams worked very hard on the food styling and presentation, focusing on fresh and healthy offerings, as well as the logistics. The teams had conducted five whole-day workshops before seven rounds of menu tastings and meetings. Each round of menu tasting took three to five hours to review the taste, portion, presentation, utensils, etc of each food item.” In her concluding comments, Monica talks us through the various developments in the market and how her firm will work around them to ensure its continued success. “The current business environment is competitive, with uncertainties in the global economy. We expect that some of the events, e.g. conferences and corporate meetings, will be shorter in the number of event days. Fortunately, the number of exhibitions, remained stable at the HKCEC as most of the exhibitions are recurrent. However, the number of attendees in the event may be affected because of the budget
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concern of overseas exhibitors, buyers and attendees on business travel and consumption. “Looking ahead, we see more organisers, international conferences or corporate events in particular, have included ‘Sustainability’ as one of the items on the venue selection check list. More organisers are aware of or are taking advantages of the HKCEC’s sustainability offerings. HML will continue to take the initiative to provide green meeting experience “LoveGreen meeting package” to event organisers and visitors to demonstrate its commitment in environmental protection and community care. “Ultimately, HML was the first organisation in Hong Kong to achieve the ISO 20121 Event Sustainability Management System certification – a significant milestone for HML team in recognition of our balanced efforts in economic, social and environmental sustainability. These achievements resulted from concerted effort of the entire HML team to support the company’s sustainability direction. HML has established a clear event sustainability policy. Our event sustainability management system, operation procedures and guidelines ensure the concept of ‘sustainability’ is fully incorporated into the entire event management cycle from booking, event planning, food & beverage services, procurement, waste management, staff training, on-site delivery and billing, as well as customer feedback handling. It also encompasses capital investments for reducing energy and water consumption, workplace health and safety as well as community service. Overall, HML will continue to work closely with event organisers to offer creative solutions and provide good experience for event attendees.”
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Best International Convention and Exhibition Centre 2017 & Award for Excellence in Convention and Exhibition Facilities
CMYK Contact: Ms Monica Lee-MĂźller Contact Email: info@hkcec.com Address: 1 Expo Drive, Wanchai, Hong Kong Phone: 00852 2582 8888
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Best Parent Education and Support Services Queenie Tan is Asia’s elite parenting coach, providing a wide range of education support services to a vast array of clients. We invited her to tell us more about the services she offers. Drawing on her vast experience in the market, Queenie Tan helps parents by teaching them applied child development psychology so that they will know how to ‘read’ their children’s cues, to interpret them accurately and to respond appropriately. She outlines how she came to enter this niche market and the key drivers behind her phenomenal success. “Personally, I believe that children have the natural drive to thrive in their environment and when their environment is compromised and is less than an ideal environment for them to thrive in, they will let us know, often in ways that look like misbehaviours, tantrums or being socially withdrawn. Prolonged exposure to these less than ideal environments often leads to childhood anxiety which affects the child’s learning, growth, ability to form meaningful relationships, resilience and their chance of living a happy, fulfilling and successful life. “My inspiration to be a parenting coach came about when I was lecturing and training in-service teachers at a local university here in Hong Kong. It was then that I started noticing more and more students who are enrolled in early childhood education courses, not because they wanted to embark on a teaching profession, but rather because they wanted to learn how to be
better parents and to be able to understand their children better. i saw a shift in parents who are a lot more aware of the need to give their children a good head start in life during the formative years, so that they will have the skills to stand out from the crowd in an increasingly noisy and crowded world. more interestingly, I’ve also noticed an increasing number of parents who are aware that the mainstream inclination of pushing academic work onto young children is causing them more harm, and that is mentally, socially and emotionally damaging to young children. The focus for early childhood education is shifting towards a more holistic approach of helping children develop a strong foundation in good character traits, high EQ, creativity and social skills which inevitably leads to the development of resilience, soft skills and happier people. It is also moving towards a more personalized approach that focusses on identifying every child’s very individual needs, skills and abilities so that they are able to thrive and stand out from the crowd.” She later became aware of a lack of high quality parent education services, which left parents inundated and confused by the plethora of random (often conflicting) information on the internet, and a sharp increase in children suffering from childhood anxiety and a rising number of childhood suicide cases in
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Asia. As such she started her business, and is keen to explain how she has been growing it to suit the ever evolving needs of her clients. “Over the past 4 years, I have been carefully crafting, designing and running various parent mentoring courses where I have been able to incorporate my 16 years of preschool teaching experience, my Montessori classroom teaching and teacher training experience, and more than 10 years worth of lecturing and mentoring trainee pre-school teachers at universities. My approach is to teach parents of young children how to apply child development psychology within their home environment and to help them customize their parenting approach to meet their own parenting styles with their children’s learning styles and personalities. As such, I don’t teach tips! Instead, I share strategies which parents can use over and over again by applying it to different situations, the most common ones being temper tantrums, teaching children to be respectful, internet safety, handling bullies, sibling rivalry, difficulty focussing and paying attention, teaching internal discipline, and preparing them for school. “As an educator, I know that in order for any kind of learning to be effective, a few conditions need to be met such as small group sizes, opportunities to develop skills vs. learning
random info, and being with a community of like-minded learners. As such, I understand that my role is to provide small groups of parents with simple step-by-step strategies, to hold their hand every step of the way and to create a community of like-minded parents so that they can get the support that they need that is congruent with their new found parenting skills. At the end of the day, I hope to help parents increase their parenting intelligence so that they will not only have the skills to deal with the daily challenges of handling their children’s tantrums and misbehaviours but also to use every one of these opportunities to help their children build a strong foundation for resilience, creativity and character development.” Overall, Queenie believes that this tailored approach is vital to the success of her business, as she proudly concludes. “My bespoke parenting programs, mentoring sessions and mastermind groups are specifically tailored to meet the needs of parents with infants all the way up to the early teens, and it is designed to provide welldefined principles grounded in child developmental psychology, step-by-step instructions for the effective implementation of these principles and on-going support to help parents develop their Parenting Intelligence.”
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Best Parent Education and Support Services
Company: Queenie Foong Kwin Tan Contact: Queenie Tan Contact Email: queenie@foongkwin.com Phone: 00852 9314 1148
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Best for Customised Asian Hedge Funds & Specialist Alternative Investment Firm of the Year 2017 Gen2 Partners (“Gen2”) is an independent alternative asset management firm in Asia, offering a range of innovative investment products to investors across the APAC region. We profile the firm to find out more. Gen2 is one of the leaders in customised Asian Hedge Funds, which includes KS Asia Absolute Return Fund IC and KS Credit Funds for Institutional Investors and Family Offices, in addition to being a trusted partner to help manage its investors’ exposure to Asia across all Asian alternative strategies. Since the firms’ inception it has grown to become among the industry leaders in customised Asian Hedge Funds for Institutional Investors and Family Offices, in addition to being a trusted partner to help manage investors’ exposure to Asia across all alternative strategies in the region. What marks Gen2 out in this competitive market is that its culture successfully combines an entrepreneurial partnership structure with a disciplined institutional investment process. As such, the firm align the interests of the investment team with our investors as much as possible. Another differentiating factor is its proprietary risk management system. This system constantly
monitors investment breaches by Gen2’s Portfolio Managers. As such, the firm’s independent risk monitor firm and in-house risk team together produces monthly risk reports using state of the art risk management system, IMAGINE, that many of global banks and asset managers relying on. Risk teams produce more than 40 different kinds of risk reports per fund and tracks over factors, including VAR (Value at Risk), scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, cross correlations, underlying asset performance, risk factor exposure (equity, fixed income and country risks), P/L attribution, liquidity analysis, tracking versus its peer group, etc. Within the Asian investment market, it is critical to keep ahead of emerging trends and developments, and therefore Gen2 Partners regularly communicates with market participants in order to ensure that its information is up to date. The firm also keep a good network of brokers, who always hold a lot of information on the industry, such as IPOs or how the market is performing.
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Looking ahead, many alterations to legislation in Gen2’s region are proving the firm with unique opportunities for growth. One such development is the Korean Government’s changing regulations, which now allow offshore investors greater access to its markets, as well as enabling firms such as mine to easily set up hedge fund businesses within the country. Therefore, moving forward Gen2 Partners is keen to set
up a hedge fund management company in Korea, to better serve Korean institutional clients and potentially bring more talents who can contribute to generate alpha and achieve absolute returns regardless of market directions. Company: Gen2 Partners Limited Contact Email: info@gen2ks.com Address: Unit 7702B, Level 77, International Commerce Centre, 1 Austin Road West, Kowloon, Hong Kong
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Best for Property Investments and Development Funds Gaw Capital Partners is a uniquely positioned private equity fund management company that focuses on real estate markets in greater China and other high barrier-to-entry markets globally. We profile the firm to find out more. Specializing in adding strategic value to underutilized real estate through redesign and repositioning, Gaw Capital runs an integrated business model with own in-house asset management operating platforms in retail, hospitality and property development. The firm’s investments span the entire spectrum of real estate sectors, including residential development, offices, retail malls, hospitality and logistics warehouses. Gaw Capital has raised five commingled funds targeting the Greater China and Asia Pacific region since 2005. The firm also manages opportunistic funds in Vietnam and the US along with a Pan Asia hospitality fund. Additionally, it also provides services for separate account direct investments globally. Overall, Gaw Capital has raised equity of USD$ 8.5 billion since 2005 and currently commands assets of USD$ 12 billion under management.
Contact Email: info@gawcapital.com Address: 18/F, No.68 Yee Wo Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Phone: 00852 2583 7700 Website: www.gawcapital.com
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Award for Excellence in Financial and Legal Translation elitesco is a Hong Kong based translation and financial company, founded and operated by professional linguists. We invited Jacqueline Ng to tell us more. Through a combination of passionate attention to detail and understanding of clients’ business needs and goals, elitesco has proved its commitment to providing integrated solutions to accommodate its client’s business objectives. The firm is engaged in production of literal materials for potential and listed companies on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited for compliance purposes. “Here at elitesco, we primarily work in the translation of financial and legal documents from English and Chinese, and vice versa for such purposes. Through a combination of our passionate attention to detail and understanding of our clients’ business needs and goals, elitesco is committed to provide integrated solutions to accommodate our client’s business objectives. We adopt a human-asset approach, one which has brought many successful stories in terms of strategic management. It is our stated intent to let our people working from home, so that we can attract quality translators based in Hong Kong. “Fundamentally, elitesco is committed to providing the best possible language support to corpo-
rates and individuals. We are well versed in the particular needs, and specialist vocabularies, of numerous professions and services. From financial documents to legal instruments, press releases to reports; elitesco is a name to trust.” Overall, the firm has enjoyed great success over recent years, and moving forward it will continue to build upon its recent achievements, as Jacqueline concludes. “On the basis of successes we had achieved during the past years, we are diversifying into medical and health communication industry. This will provide us with many great opportunities for growth.”
Company: elitesco Communication Limited Contact: Jacqueline Ng Contact Email: JacquelineNg@elitesco.com.hk Address: 1518 Metro Centre 1, 32 Lam Hing Street, Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong Phone: 00852 3971 0893
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