JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN HONG KONG
December 2015
www.amcham.org.hk
THE SOCIAL NETWORK FOR CHANGE CY YEUNG
December 2015 • VOLUME 47 NUMBER 12
DIRECTOR OF CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY INTEL CHINA
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December 2015
Contents
Vol 47 No 12
Publisher
Richard R Vuylsteke
Editor-in-Chief Kenny Lau
08
COVER STORY
Doing good can come in many different forms of philanthropy. To ensure sustainable change for the future, technology giant Intel has taken its CSR programs in China to another level by looking at the big picture and applying the business’s core competencies
Managing Editor Leon Lee
Advertising Sales Manager Regina Leung
biz.hk is a monthly magazine of news and views for management executives and members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. Its contents are independent and do not necessarily reflect the views of officers, governors or members of the Chamber.
04 Vision, Relevance & Influence
Advertising office 1904 Bank of America Tower 12 Harcourt Rd, Central, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2530 6900 Fax: (852) 3753 1206 Email: amcham@amcham.org.hk Website: www.amcham.org.hk
06 New Business Contacts
Printed by Ease Max Ltd 2A Sum Lung Industrial Building 11 Sun Yip St, Chai Wan, Hong Kong (Green Production Overseas Group) Designed by Overa Creative Tel: (852) 3596 8466 Email: ray.chau@overa.com.hk Website: www.overacreative.com ©The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, 2015 Library of Congress: LC 98-645652 For comments, please send to biz.hk@amcham.org.hk Single copy price HK$50 Annual subscription HK$600/US$90
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AMCHAM NEWS AND VIEWS In order for Hong Kong to maintain its status as a top-tier commercial and business center, there are many strategic areas, including transportation, intellectual property and trade agreements, the government must address in the coming year. While it might be challenging, results would be tremendous for the city and its people
36 executives joined AmCham's business network last month
07 New Member Spotlight Each month, biz.hk highlights a recently joined AmCham member. For this issue, we speak to Lucien Harrington, Managing Director, Greater Asia, FutureBrand
44 Mark Your Calendar
COVER STORY 08 The Social Network for Change Doing good can come in many different forms of philanthropy. To ensure sustainable change for the future, technology giant Intel has taken its corporate social responsibility in China to another level by looking at the big picture and applying the business’s core competencies
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14 WOMEN OF INFLUENCE Business leaders and professionals celebrate the achievements of women professionals in the Hong Kong business community and discuss the future of gender diversity in the workplace
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32 FINANCE & ECONOMICS Dr John Silvia weighs in on key issues in the US and China, including a hike in US interest rates and China’s recent economic woes, declining Renminbi and 13th five-year development plan
AMERICAN TOPICS Over 250 members and guests, including more than 40 Hong Kong government officials, gather at the annual holiday luncheon to enjoy traditional Thanksgiving food, fine wine and great conversations
WOMEN OF INFLUENCE
30 Young Achiever of the Year Michelle Sun, First Code Academy
Business leaders and professionals gather at the annual conference to celebrate the achievements of women professionals in the Hong Kong business community and to discuss the future of gender diversity in the workplace
31 Michelle Sun, First Code Academy Anthony A Rose, House of Rose Professional
16 To A Better and Brighter Future
20 Tackling Gender Equality A diverse collection of panelists ensue on a series of frank and thought-provoking discussions on gender equity in companies, depiction of women in media and the evolving workplace of the 21st century for women professionals
WOMEN OF INFLUENCE AWARDS
25 Professional of the Year Kimberley Cole, Thomson Reuters 26 Best Company for Women State Street Asia
27 Non-profit Leader of the Year Su-Mei Thompson, The Women’s Foundation 28 Entrepreneur of the Year Karin Ann, International Montessori School 29 Master of the Arts Claire Hsu, Asia Art Archive
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FINANCE & ECONOMICS 32 An Economist’s View on US and China Wells Fargo’s top economist Dr John Silvia weighs in on key issues in the US and China, from a hike in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve in December to China’s recent economic woes, declining Renminbi and 13th five-year development plan
AMERICAN TOPICS 36 AmCham Celebrates Thanksgiving Over 250 members and guests, including more than 40 Hong Kong Government officials, gather at the annual holiday luncheon to enjoy traditional Thanksgiving food, fine wine and great conversations
AMCHAM PUBLICATIONS 40 2015 Index of Articles A guide to articles on business issues and relevant topics published in biz.hk during the year
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biz.hk Editorial
Board of Governors Chairman
Peter Levesque
Vice Chairman
Walter Dias
Treasurer
Tom Burns
Executive Committee Evan Auyang, Sara Yang Bosco, Steve Lackey, Ryan Mai, Alan Turley, Richard Weisman Governors David Adelman, Donald Austin, Owen Belman, Diana David, Sean Ferguson, Robert Grieves, John (Jack) E Lange, Seth Peterson, Catherine Simmons, Eric Szweda, Colin Tam, Jennifer Van Dale, Frank Wong, Patrick Wu Ex-Officio Governor President
James Sun Richard R Vuylsteke
Chamber Committees AmCham Ball Apparel & Footwear China Business Communications & Marketing Corporate Social Responsibility Education Energy Entrepreneurs/SME Environment Financial Services Food & Beverage Hospitality & Tourism Human Resources Information & Communications Technology Insurance & Healthcare
Ryan Mai Mark Green Michael Klibaner Lili Zheng Charlie Pownall Oliver Rust Pat-Nie Woo Virginia Wilson Rick Truscott Cynthia Chow Laurie Goldberg Jim Taylor Steven X Chan Veronica Sze Mark Kemper Shanthi Flynn Chris Meyrick Rex Engelking
Hanif Kanji Rebecca Harrison Jenny Wong Intellectual Property Gabriela Kennedy Clara Ingen-Housz Law Joyce Wong Pharmaceutical Robert Johnston Real Estate Edward Farrelly Terrance Philips SelectUSA Lili Zheng Philip Cheng Senior Financial Forum Bianca Wong Senior HR Forum Ivan Strunin Taxation Barrett Bingley Trade & Investment Gavin Dow Transportation & Logistics Anna-Marie C Slot Women of Influence Jennifer Parks Michael Harrington Young Professionals
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hief Executive CY Leung and Financial Secretary John Tsang will soon reveal their top priorities for 2016 in the Policy Address and Budget, respectively. Given a rapidly changing social, economic and political landscape, Hong Kong must stay visionary, relevant, and influential in order to remain a top international business hub. The continued success of the city will, in fact, depend on government initiatives in many strategic areas. Hong Kong will continue its role as an economic model – a source of business best practices with a simple and low tax regime, intellectual property rights protection, and the rule of law – for Mainland China. It is well positioned to exemplify key principles such as an open, efficient and globalized capital market through engagement with PRC’s ministries and departments. In global and regional trade, proactive participation is vital to strengthening Hong Kong’s competitiveness. The HK-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), and developments regarding the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiatives are important to the city’s pillar and emerging industries. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) should be next. The progress on the implementation of G20’s new standard of automatic exchange of taxpayer information is on the right track for Hong Kong, but no effort should be spared to assess and address any tax-related proposals which may have a material impact on Hong Kong. Uncertainty must be clarified as they often hinder economic activities and financial investments. The US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) enacted earlier is an example. Copyright challenges, particularly those arising from the online environment, are significant; and they require patent reform without delay and a crackdown on counterfeit products. It calls for a robust intellectual property rights protection regime for all products and industries, along with international best standards on the protection and enforcement of trademark, copyright and patent rights.
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VISION, RELEVANCE & INFLUENCE The Customs Department is commended for tackling counterfeit pharmaceuticals at retail, distribution, and trans-shipment through Hong Kong. At the retail level in particular, sales of counterfeit drugs are reported to have dropped drastically over the last 10 years. To encourage investment in the sector and safeguard pharmaceutical patent rights, an effective patent linkage regime is highly recommended. While Hong Kong is renowned in a number of areas globally, its digital agenda is far behind the competition. There is an urgent need to connect the current analogue silos and create an environment to attract talent to capitalize on opportunities in data analytics for urban planning, energy efficiency, traffic control, as well as services for education, healthcare and an aging population. One of Hong Kong’s assets is a pool of talent – a mixture of overseas and local human capital – from which companies can source and staff their workforce. The business sector can only benefit when policies regarding vocational training, labor law, and immigration policy are relevant to the current economic model, as opposed to the existing regime dating back to an era when Hong Kong was still a manufacturing-based economy. As the government attempts to rebrand Hong Kong through a new, high-level global destination marketing campaign as a dynamic and exciting modern city with a focus on the high-end long-haul markets, it is an opportunity to better leverage the expertise of PR agencies in developing a year-round campaign which highlights sporting events, culinary traditions,
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nature, arts and culture, in addition to other unique aspects including offerings of traditional Chinese medicine. On the transportation front, a green transport system by redefining road space usage and making road and rail-based mass public transport more efficient is most urgent. Ideally, Hong Kong could use more natural gas as a cleaner form of fuel for road transport as well as electricity generation; but it would require a better distribution infrastructure such as the provision of a high-capacity LNG terminal nearby. Simultaneously, Hong Kong needs to address the lack of backup land in order to support local operations of container vessels and the liberalization of Shenzhen and Nansha cargo seaports. The Transportation and Housing Bureau’s Proposals for Enhancing the Use of Port Back-up Land in Kwai Tsing is a positive step in supporting one of Hong Kong’s most important industries amid increasing regional competition. The key is to secure Hong Kong’s position as a trans-shipment hub of the world. The next 12 months may turn out to be no less challenging than the last 12. However, there is so much to do to improve upon Hong Kong’s status as a top-tier commercial and business center. Yes, it will take initiation, collaboration and execution, and it will lead to tremendous results - enhanced livelihood and quality of life for the people, and a strengthened business environment on par or above any others.
5
New
Business Contacts The following people are new AmCham members: ACE Insurance Limited MumTaz Ali Chief Financial Officer, Greater China
Arkadin Esmond Chan Sales Director, Hong Kong
Foundation Global Education Lorraine Moore Director of Community Outreach
Global Payments Asia-Pacific Ltd Kate Hu Regional Director, Strategy and Marketing
Procter & Gamble HK Ltd Michael Yates Vice President
Regus HK Management Ltd Natina Wong Country Manager
Google (Hong Kong) Limited Baker & McKenzie Mai Lin Associate
Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft Amanda Shuai Asia Business Development & Marketing Executive
Citi Victor Ekong Senior VP
Compass Offices Xenia Wong Business Development Manager
Andrew Ure Public Policy Manager, Trade and Economic Affairs, Google APAC-MEAR
Hasbro Far East Ltd Michael Moriarty Senior Vice President, Finance & Operation
Hong Kong Zhong Hao Tai Rui Investment Company Limited Yan Liu Assistant General Manager
Hutchison Whampoa Limited Franz Brand Group Legal Counsel, A.S. Watson Group (HK) Limited
Hysan Development Company Limited Dechert LLP Eric Deltour Partner
Maggie Cheung Legal Counsel and Company Secretary
KPMG
Dr. William Cheung & Associates
Michael Monteforte Director
Stefani Cheung General Dentist
Minibox Self Storage
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide (HK) Adrian Warr Senior Director
EMBA Global Asia Ernest Cheung Placement Manager (non-Banking and Finance), Career Development Office
FormerFeds Ltd. Susan Geyer President
Alan Seigrist Chief Executive Officer
Newtimes Development Ltd Alex Angelchik CEO Paul J Walsh COO
Philip Morris Asia Limited Raul Academia Director Fiscal Affairs and International Trade - Asia Victoria Chua Manager Public Affairs
SCAD Hong Kong Minjie Chen Executive Director Lillian Jiang Industry and Alumni Outreach Coordinator John Paul Rowan Vice President for Strategy and Innovation
Smart Shirts Ltd Jane Jin Group Chief Financial Officer Wicky Lo Deputy Managing Director
St. James's Place (Hong Kong) Limited Mark Rawson CEO
UBS AG Kathryn Shih President, Asia Pacific
United Technologies Corporation Nicole Wong Manager, Corporate Marketing & Communications
VF Asia Pacific Sourcing S. a r. l. Martin Duff Vice President
Visa Hong Kong Limited Andy Yee Director, Public Policy & Government Relations
View our other members at: www.amcham.org.hk/memberlist
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biz.hk 12 â&#x20AC;˘ 2015
New Member Spotlight
Lucien Harrington Occupation: Managing Director, Greater China and Southeast Asia, FutureBrand Industry: Consulting Member since: October 2015
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Why did you join AmCham? I was first active in AmCham when I was head of marketing (for Asia) for The Walt Disney Company. It’s a good place to network, share stories and experiences, listen to challenges that other companies and people are facing in the market. I’ve made many good friends at AmCham. I often hear from our clients about a particular need or service. So, if I learn of what other AmCham members may be doing, I can make an introduction and establish a connection that will help our clients and other members. Can you tell us about FutureBrand? FutureBrand is a branding consultancy. We are the creative future company, and our job is to help other companies create their future. Our passion is discovering inspiring ideas that will make their businesses successful and give it a competitive advantage. We use an array of tools – mostly innovative and proprietary but also some traditional – to understand the company’s objectives, gain insights and create ideas that bring the brand to life. How is business so far? FutureBrand has had a great year with some amazing clients. The work we have produced has won numerous awards here in Hong Kong, regionally and globally. Hong Kong has become an important hub in Asia and in the wider network, and our clients are reflective of that – a nice mix of global and local clients, including Alibaba, Nespresso, MGM, Qantas, HK Arts Council and British Council.
What are some common missteps companies make when entering the Hong Kong market? One is that you can understand Hong Kong in a short space of time. I have been here for 12 years, and I’m still learning. Central and Mid-Levels, for instance, are not representative of the many strands of culture and people found in Hong Kong. What’s your favorite aspect of Hong Kong? I love the fact that while most people think of Hong Kong as the bustling, neon-filled, crowded cityscape, within 30 minutes you can be walking along a stunningly beautiful hiking trail with striking views that are the complete antidote to the 24-hour, always-on personality that people are more familiar with. What are you currently reading? The Cat From Hue by John Lawrence, CBS’s correspondent during the Vietnam War. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? I’ve been blessed to have worked with so many talented people from whom I have learned so much. The one that springs to mind is: obstacles that are placed in your path aren’t meant to stop you from getting to where you want to be. They are put there to give you the opportunity to show how much you want something. They are put there to stop the people who don’t want the thing as much as you do.
7
COVER STORY
The Social Network For Change Doing good can come in many different forms, such as donations, volunteering and other kinds of philanthropy. To ensure sustainable change for the future, technology giant Intel has taken its corporate social responsibility in China to another level by looking at the big picture and applying the businessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s core competencies
By Leon Lee
8
biz.hk 12 â&#x20AC;˘ 2015
CY Yeung
Photos: Silver Image
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very large corporation runs a number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs in order to give back to the community and society. While the reasons behind the programs might be to improve a company’s public image or a genuine desire to make a change, CSR tends to be overlooked when compared to other initiatives that would generate a profit. However, Intel China and its Director of Corporate Responsibility, CY Yeung, has set out a strategy that can benefit business and society at the same time. “Every company and business has their social purpose. For Intel, our role is figuring how to leverage core competency to drive societal change and progress.”
Strengthening a sector Like many multinational companies, Intel’s initial CSR forays in China were corporate volunteering, philanthropic and social contribution programs. In 2000, they started the Intel Teach program with the Ministry of Education to address the quality of education. “We launched Intel Teach with the focus on training teachers around the globe. The program tries to improve the quality of teaching because we believe teachers are the key to students,” says Yeung, who is formerly Chair of BCSR (Business Council For Sustainability and Responsibility) at AmCham Shanghai. So far, they have trained 12 million teachers around the world. But over time, the program in China gradually shifted from just training teachers to improving and sustaining education through advocacy with policymakers,
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in addition to professional development and cross-sector partnerships, creating an ecosystem of like-minded thinkers for deepened collaboration. “The key essence is how we maximize our societal impact and leverage some of the core capabilities within the organization. So Intel CSR is how to bring together the totality of the goodness and focus on a couple of key societal needs, and how we use innovation, the same thing that we have applied into the business world, into a social context.” The senior executive coined it as social innovation which uses innovative approaches to address societal challenges. After the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008, they found an opportunity to apply the concept to the social sector in China. Despite being in its infancy, the domestic nonprofit sector played a big part in the recovery. Intel saw that the NGOs had a wealth of potential to do more and contribute beyond disaster relief. “In order for China to grow sustainably and harmoniously, a stronger social sector is needed. Our team looked around the globe and
realized all those issues including education, urbanization, aging healthcare, pollution are really a result of development. If you look at the US, Europe, they’ve gone through a similar process as part of the urbanization process. So then I realized that maybe we should really learn from each other instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.” Yeung wondered with his team if Intel could take their success in building an information and communications
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technology (ICT) business in China and apply it to the social sector. They started work on a proposal and approached the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) about replicating the successful business ecosystem they’ve built into building a social ecosystem. Wang Zhenyao, the then-Director General of MCA, was very supportive of the idea. “The approach was to figure out and identify who are the future leaders
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of the sector, who have the most potential to be those leaders. We wanted to find out where they are, who they are, what their core skills are and their history and to celebrate their success and promote their practice.”
A network for doing good In the early nineties, the ICT industry in China was just starting, and
the personal computer industry was dominated by large multinational corporations. The country didn’t have a healthy independent hardware and software vendor community. Intel came to the conclusion that in order to grow its business in the country, they needed to help China grow first. The company engaged with local companies and set up the Intel Architecture Lab in Shanghai in 1994 to help create a domestic computing
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Steps to implement a
CSR 3.0 strategy 1.
3. Establish a CSR champion or group that is part of the company's senior management and empower them to explore and test innovative approaches that can transform the business model in line with societal expectations and opportunities.
5. Map the issue-specific stakeholder ecosystem and convene key stakeholders across social organizations, academia, government, businesses, media, and others.
2.
Create an open feedback platform to capture realtime learning from rapid experimentation and scaling in the field to guide future efforts.
4. Identify the most pertinent societal issues and identify where these align with the business's strategic intent and core capabilities that would maximize shared business and social impact.
Dismantle boundaries between sectors by mobilizing and rallying both internal and external stakeholders in the ecosystem to collaborate and innovate to develop and scale effective solutions.
Source: Intel China
ecosystem. They brought in experts from around the world to train and develop local talents. Today, China has become of the largest countries for ICT production and consumption. Thinking along the same lines, Intel launched the Innovation Initiative for Nonprofits (IINP) in the beginning of 2010 as part of their plan to grow the social sector in China. In the first year, they received more than 300 applicants. They were able to identify the key players, gather them and have them share with one another ideas and
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programs that worked and what didn’t. They organized events where leading experts from around the world share their expertise and experience with the nonprofits, increasing their knowledge and potential. By the second year, they were up to 900 applicants for the initiative. “If you go through your innovation network, you’ll be able to gain a lot of insights. You have a lot of people doing rapid experimentation, and other NGOs that will share with you their knowledge. You basically become a data
analyst. It’s interesting because within one or two years, we realize we know much more than a lot of people who have been in this business for a long time. That’s the power of innovation. You don’t use the old ways of addressing an issue.” Yeung adds: “Instead of talking about what we have been doing ourselves, we focus on how to help other companies to do better. By engaging in CSR holistically, you’ll be able to get in touch with social ecosystems. It’s a hub of innovation that
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translate outside needs into business or technological ecosystems.” The director believes that by acting as an intermediary for NGOs, it is a much more effective way of helping rather than just from donating money. “As the NGO sector grows, they can be the future small and medium businesses to address social challenges versus just donations.” To help further discover and promote social innovation among local NGOs, Intel has incubated an NGO called Cinnovate. The group identifies and recruits changemakers across different sectors to establish a network of people and organizations to push social innovations. Working with Intel, they have developed a nonprofit online platform to connect volunteers, nonprofits and corporations. Nonprofits can share any needs they might have, such as for computers or office equipment on the platform, and any corporations looking to help can easily see what is needed. Starting two years ago, Intel and Cinnovate organize an annual one-week long event dedicated to social innovation. Social Innovation Week brings international experts and
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thought leaders together to mingle and interact with local practitioners. At an earlier one which focused on bringing technology, humanities and arts together to address community and city issues, Yeung recalls a government official telling him that the NGOs were talking about the exact solutions the government needed in dealing with urbanization and smart cities. He realized that this could be the topic to bring more attention to how NGOs can be of service to a bigger, more corporate audience. His team has developed a campaigned called DIY Smart City to start a conversation on how citizens, NGOs and the government can work together to build their cities. “Instead of talking about selling technology, we discussed how to address government and societal issues. In the process, NGOs can play a key role because NGOs know the needs of citizens better than the government and businesses,” Yeung says. He believes that cities and communities will become the hub of innovations to tackle issues like low-carbon economy and aging.
A win-win When Yeung began his current role seven years ago, he saw that when people talked about CSR they weren’t even using the same terms. This made discussions complicated so he decided to come up with a framework to easily explain it as only as an ICT veteran can. When corporations take part in donations, volunteering, philanthropy and other traditional forms of CSR, he labels it as CSR 1.0. Then about five years ago, there was a movement influenced by economist Michael Porter who wrote several papers saying that for a business to have sustainable societal impact, its actions should be tied to the business’s core competency. For Intel, this was innovation and Yeung calls it CSR 2.0. For CSR 3.0, an organization moves further away from the business and instead looks to work and partner with other organizations from all sectors to identify the causes of social
issues and share resources to come with an effective solution. Using the classic analogy, CSR 3.0 and social innovation move beyond giving someone a fish to eat, teaching them how to fish or even establishing a healthy fishing industry. It’s about finding out what is limiting that fishing industry socially and then working with fishermen and their customers to tackle the issue, grow or even revolutionize the whole industry. As for now, there isn’t a CSR 4.0 as Yeung says they’re still trying to make CSR 3.0, an open innovation ecosystem, work. “The interesting thing about innovation is every day you have a new insight on what’s better. It’s really important to tap into the rapid experimentation. Everyone is doing experimentation and sharing to figure out better ways of doing it,” he enthusiastically explains. “So instead of having a few people willing to sit in the office doing innovations from inside out, you can have so many people be part of it through a network of innovation, basically a virtual social innovation lab.” As the ecosystem and CSR grows, Yeung sees benefits that go beyond just socially. He points out that CSR can act as the eyes and ears of an organization that wants to move forward as it helps the company be in touch with different aspects of the community. Knowing what is happening on the ground level can help a company sets its business strategies. “In the past, it was inside out – let’s figure out who’s going to buy our products. This is really looking at the outside, at societal and eco circumstances. What is coming, what’s the emerging trend like aging or others? Then you look at how to translate that into business,” Yeung explains. “CSR becomes a strategic apex of an organization, setting the future of the business direction. That potential opportunity transforms a society and transforms the business model inside out. It’s real shared value for societal impact and for business sustainability. It’s a win-win for everyone.”
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WOMEN OF INFLUENCE
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EXCLUSIVE AWARDS SPONSOR
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To a Better and Brighter Future By Leon Lee
F
or the twelfth year, AmCham was proud to hold the annual Women of Influence Conference & Awards – a day of honoring and celebrating the achievements of women professionals and gender diversity. The event, attended by both male and female business leaders and professionals, offers thoughtful insights and healthy discussions on closing the gap of gender diversity in the workplace. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Evolution or Revolution: how will you succeed and excel at work in 2030?’ In his opening keynote address, Ronald Lee, who was awarded the Champion for the Advancement of Women at last year’s WOI Awards, wondered what can be achieved in 15 years’ time. Hong Kong certainly has
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enormous potential for achievement given its advantageous location at the doorsteps of China. “Can we have all of the listed companies in Hong Kong with boards comprised of 30 percent women by 2030? After all, studies showed that Fortune 500 companies which have the highest representation of women on their boards significantly outperform those with the lowest representation. Specifically, return on equity for companies with the highest percentages of women work representation exceed those with the lowest by 53 percent,” Lee says. “By 2030, can we work in a society with no doubt that men and women have equal opportunities to work? Right now, while women represent half of the world’s population, they only represent
37 percent of the world’s GDP.” However, the managing director at Goldman Sachs (Asia) stops short of making a prediction. Instead he offers three suggestions on what we can do today to get to where we want to be by 2030: to know, to teach, to believe.
Know thyself For the first part, Lee questions how well we know ourselves and our hidden biases. According to research by psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, 75 percent of men who took their gender stereotype test associate the word ‘male’ with the word ‘work’ and the word ‘female’ with the word
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her as smart, hardworking and aggressive. From now on, we’re not going to have a double standard where being aggressive is positive for a man and negative for a woman.’ The manager sheepishly agreed and indicated that he understood.” Lee found the story to be both inspiring and haunting. Schwartz astutely and publicly pointed out an unconscious bias but Lee admitted that he could have easily seen himself making that same judgement and saying those words.
Ronald Lee
Teaching others
‘family.’ Despite such stereotype, the ranks of women in the US non-farm payroll have exceeded those of men, 64.2 million women to 63.4 million men, since 2010. The senior executive embarrassingly admits that he was among the 75 percent who had an automatic stereotype that men work while women stay at home, when he took the test online. But it seemed women had hidden biases as well. “Apparently their study showed that 80 percent of women showed the same automatic stereotype associating the word ‘male’ with work and the word ‘female’ with family,” he points out. To illustrate how these hidden biases exist in the workplace, Lee
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shares a recent account of a meeting at Goldman Sachs where the Chairman for Asia Pacific, Mark Schwartz, met with business managers who are expected to describe their pipeline of women candidates for promotion. “As the manager was working his way through the list, he described one of his best, ‘she’s smart, hardworking but a little aggressive,’” he recalls. “Before he could go on, Mark sharply cut him off and said could you please repeat what you just said. And the manager, taken aback, obliged by tensely saying, ‘she’s smart, hardworking but a little aggressive.’” “Mark cut him off angrily and said, ‘You run one of the toughest business units in the firm, and how can you describe her that way. You know if she weren’t a woman, you would describe
However, knowing your hidden bias is not enough, having knowledge is equally important. When he was asked to be co-chair of Goldman Sachs’ diversity efforts in Asia, Lee thought himself to be an unlikely candidate having grown up in an all-boys school and working in the male-dominated investment banking industry. “Before getting involved with the firm’s diversity efforts, I would have thought that gender equality was primarily something that women should drive,” Lee explains. “I was not familiar with the concept of He for She and the notion that men may have as important of a role to play in gender equality as women. I might not have known what He for She was because I grew up in an all-boys school system or because I worked in testosterone-driven investment banking industry. But mainly I think I didn’t know because I was uneducated on the subject.” Therefore, in order to help companies and society make advancements in gender diversity in the next 15 years, he believes they must have the mindset of a teacher in order to create interest and curiosity in the subject.
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Deborah Kan
“How do we get inside the minds of those who we want to learn? How do we keep the curiosity among those who are ignorant, skeptical or even hostile to the reality of where things need to be by 2030?” Lee asks.
Turning belief into reality To demonstrate the power of believing, Lee used the story of runner Roger Bannister who was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. Before he ran it in three minutes and 59.4 seconds in 1954, experts and scientists said that humans were unable to do so. However, two months after Bannister’s achievement, another runner John Landy also ran a mile in under four minutes. Within a year of Bannister’s achievement, 24 other runners had
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achieved the mark. Today, it’s not uncommon for runners to do it. “So what is it that made it possible for Roger Bannister to achieve something that people thought was impossible? Belief. He was not constrained by what scientists and doctors said, by the past, or by pain or difficulty. He believed he could do it,” Lee explains. He mentions that South Korean President Park Geun-hye, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg believed too – a belief which has led them to become the leaders they are today. “Whether it’s evolution or revolution, to achieve our goal by 2030 we have to believe. We have to believe in the extraordinary, even the impossible,” Lee says.
First-hand experience New media entrepreneur Deborah Kan also expressed in her luncheon keynote the importance of believing. At the beginning of her journalism career, she had an interview for her first on-air reporting job. She was confident in her prospects, having interned at a CBS affiliate station in San Francisco and having been accepted to Stanford University’s Mass Media Institute. However, the interview ended up being what she calls the biggest rejection in life. The news director at the television
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station watched her interview tape for one minute before stopping it and told her squarely that she didn’t have it and shouldn’t waste her time in the industry. She was undoubtedly devastated and saddened by the response. But later the sadness turned to anger. “I felt anger like I’ve never felt in my entire life. I felt so angry that anyone can possibly say to me, ‘You cannot do it.’ So I promised myself that day I was going to prove him wrong. And to this very day, I thank him. I thank him because when there are times where someone says to me, ‘Deborah, I don’t think you can do this,’ I think of him and I do it,” Kan explains. The news director was just one of
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several people who had a significant impact on Kan’s distinguished journalism career with Thomson Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. Another one of her influencers is Geraldine Cox, founder of Sunrise Children’s Village orphanage outside of Phnom Penh. Cox was working in the city in 1997 during the bloody coup of the government led by Hun Sen. When all foreigners were fleeing the country, Cox stayed behind and volunteered to watch over children at the orphanage where nobody was taking care of them. Staying behind took a lot of courage as did calling CNN back then to tell them of what was really happening in the country. At Sunrise, Kan met two girls who were physically scarred by acid, yet always had a smile on their faces. The veteran journalist was taken aback by their resilience. “It’s a characteristic that I feel is essential today for where and how we should be talking to our girls,” she says.
Looking past and ahead On what 2030 holds, Kan looked back on her own experiences as a journalist as an indicator on how fast things can change. In 1994, she was in Seoul to cover the death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. On one day, she woke up early to exercise to start off her day as she often does, but she was turned away by a staff member at the hotel gym. Kan figured that the gym wasn’t opened yet but the attendant bluntly said no women. So she asked where the women’s gym was and the person said there were none.
In 1996, Kan was on a media tour of the aircraft carrier USS Independence. Besides herself and another female reporter, the rest of the group were men. Three hours into the tour, they were told that they would need to spend the night on the aircraft carrier because their transport broke down. For the entirety of their stay, Kan and the other female reporter had several guards watching them. “This was 1996, there was not a single woman on the USS Independence. It was an entire male crew,” Kan recalls. Then four or five years ago, she was invited to go onboard another carrier, the USS George Bush. She took her family and this time she was given a tour by a woman crew member. “I said to her, ‘how many women are on board these days?’ She said on that ship, there was about a one-third women crew. And I was like, ‘go women’. I’m sure today that number is even higher. They were everything from fighter pilots down to engineers,” Kan expresses. Like Lee, she is unsure what the future holds for the workplace or her two daughters but she’s hopeful. “I don’t know what’s it going to be like but I will tell you I love the fact that both of them have come home from school and said ‘I’ve been a victim of sexism.’ And why do I love that? Because they’re so aware of it,” Kan says. She hopes that in 15 years there would be no more conversations on glass ceilings and women on executive boards because it won’t be an issue anymore. She believes what people can do right now is not to limit themselves. “If we can say I’m worthy and I can do this, I think we’re going to see a lot more results,” she says. “I, 100 percent, believe that change begins within ourselves.”
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W
e all know gender and diversity issues persist in Hong Kong and beyond as many speakers at AmCham’s Women of Influence Conference each year recount their experiences on the matter while many attendees nod along in familiarity. This event remains instrumental in sparking dialogue on these issues to help progress gender equity in various industries. This year, business leaders highlighted areas in need of more attention and ways to fix the problem of gender inequality, among other inspiring insights, in three panels at the conference.
Tackling Gender Equality By Nan-Hie In
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Gender Equality The He for She and What Will Be panel began with a focus on the advocates of the gender equity space, notably the movement of male champions for female progress in the workplace. The talk was moderated by Sophie Guerin, APJ Diversity and Inclusion Lead at Dell. James Quinnild, Partner and Financial Services Consulting Leader for Asia at PwC, relates to the topic with his earlier experience at the firm in the US when he helped women ascend the ranks, and a more challenging task of doing the same in Japan to create more opportunities for women. “I have a number of them now working in London, New York and Hong Kong, and it got me thinking
again about how we can do things differently in our process to get the outcome we want, which is a diverse group of leaders,” he reveals. Quinnild says his firm is now very active as a sponsor for the HeForShe movement and for The Women’s Foundation with its mentoring initiative. Ben Way, CEO of Macquarie Group Asia, recalls an early example of making a change at the firm, which drew questions like “Why don’t people just get on with it?” and “How can we accommodate female employees for breastfeeding upon returning from maternity leave?”. Breastfeeding rooms in the office was the answer in Asia to much success. The experience is an indication that people are not inherently resistant to diversity and inclusiveness but have not gone through the thinking process, Way believes. And more could be done for a pool of about 300 employees. “We have a lot of policies and initiatives, but diversity among our partners is still behind,” he says. “This is where I think the most difficult conversations have been.” Lily Ng, Director of Typhoon Consulting, adds, “When a man steps up, gives [women] a platform and decides to stand for diversity and equality, he is breaking the mold. That’s why it is important that we collaborate and work together to achieve through this journey.” On the execution of driving gender equity throughout an organization, Quinnild notes how different it is for
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women to take the next steps compared with men as they have different motivations and demands for support to get ahead. However, given a strong stance on meritocracy and equality, a one-size-fits-all solution might not be the right answer. “We need to evolve from everything equal to what we need to do on a more tailor-made basis to get the outcome we want,” he explains. In contrast, Richard Nicoll, Chief Shopping Marketing Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, has had a different experience in an industry where women dominate, including top level positions. His recent initiatives include helping women in developing countries, such as female farmers in Indonesia for Java Mountain Coffee. With Nicoll’s help, these women banded together to break the mold of the male-dominated coffee production in the country, aiming to sell their coffee to major supermarkets including Walmart. It was a journey of going through a large number of men in the chain to get the support. “Many male champions for women have taken a bit of jump of faith to make that happen as this is often taken for granted,” he says.
Media & Diversity The next panel on How Media Is Addressing Gender Diversity, moderated by Su-Mei Thompson, CEO of The Women’s Foundation, was about the media’s depiction of women and inequality, beginning with a trailer viewing of the
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From left: James Quinnild, Lily Ng, Richard Nicoll, Ben Way and Sophie Guerin
film She Objects, a documentary directed by Nicola Fan on how media reinforces gender stereotypes. From research for the film, Fan learnt that young girls are less happy nowadays and that social media has had an impact on how women spend time to portray their best selves on these networks. This habit reinforces women to seek validation from others, she notices, citing the trend of younger-age sex offenders in the city and the prevalence of the Internet. “Younger kids are accessing adult content conveniently without parental awareness,” she says. “They turn to media, including social media, for answers that they are not getting from school or parents.”
Carlo Imò, President of Kering Asia Pacific, which has just signed a five-year partnership deal with Cannes Films Festival, sheds light on substantial gender issues in the film world, including the absence of females in top echelons of the industry. Since the inception of the Oscars in 1929, there has been only four female nominees for Best Director, including Kathryn Bigelow who became the first woman to win the award in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Female actors also tend to get more passive roles, he points out. “If you look at the most played roles by women, it is 89 percent as nurses, 82 percent as secretaries, 57 percent as teachers, 53 percent as waitresses and 47 percent as cashiers.”
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To better present women in films, Kering, in collaboration with the Cannes Film Festival, hosts events such as Women in Motion series to stimulate discussion on these issues and more. As such, Salma Hayak has spoken about sexism in Hollywood and Frances McDormand on pay disparity within the industry. Shannon Van Sant, a veteran TV newsperson and documentary filmmaker, speaking about the criticism female anchors sometimes face because of their appearances, recalls one experience of filming a documentary on the plight of North Korean refugees. “I took it back to the executives at a network in New York, and the only thing they would talk about was the way I looked when filming the story on camera,” she says. Van Sant also notes the scarcity of TV shows or films on women, their upbringing and adventures as the main story, instead of their relationships. Meanwhile, Dr Mario Liong, an assistant professor at Centennial College, highlights the worrying impact of the pseudo-model phenomenon in Hong Kong, which started in 2008. Companies have amateur models depicted in images that resemble Japanese pornography to target male teenagers for the purpose of marketing, he explains. In interviews with college-age women about these images, Liong found they either despised these visuals or felt insecure about their bodies as a result. “The female sexy model phenomenon
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From left: Dr. Mario Liong, Nicola Fan, Carlo Imò, Shannon Van Sant and Su-Mei Thompson
plays an important role in encouraging a sexualized culture, and it undermines women’s abilities,” he says.
The Workplace At the final panel on The Future of Work, moderated by Stella Abraham of JLL, much wisdom arose from the speakers on cultivating a productive and healthy office environment to the different styles of workspace. Michelle Lam, Founder of The Spoilt Experiences Group, which specializes on gift voucher experiences, discusses about her modern office of predominantly young staff, such as using cloud technology so employees can work from home or office.
In her company, in lieu of health insurance, staff are offered a “Spoil Yourself Allowance” and can spend it on traveling or use it to reimburse their medical expenses. It became an instant hit with Y-generation employees, a demographic that appreciates choices in the workplace, Lam explains. Despite a more traditional office environment at DBS Bank Hong Kong, it is in the midst of a transition as its leadership is striving to create a high-purpose bank by “making banking joyful,” says David Lynch, Managing Director and Head of Technology & Operations. All 20,000 employees were pooled to discuss areas for improvement, including the adoption of technology.
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He for She and What Will Be Lily Ng Director Typhoon Consulting Richard Nicoll Chief Shopper Marketing Officer Saatchi & Saatchi James Quinnild Partner, Financial Services Consulting Leader - Asia PwC Ben Way CEO Macquarie Group Asia Moderator: Sophie Guerin APJ Diversity & Inclusion Lead Dell
How Media Is Addressing Gender Diversity From left: Emma Reynolds, David Lynch, Michelle Lam and Stella Abraham
Driving change throughout the firm requires “tremendous persistence”, proper resources and a dedicated team to spark change which have helped immensely. “I’ve got an innovation team that can build applications and play with robotics and artificial intelligence,” Lynch says. “There’s a huge interest although you may not always succeed.” It installs a culture in the workplace of trying different things. Emma Reynolds, Co-founder and CEO of e3Reloaded, says distrust is a leading problem in organizations. “There is nothing more demeaning and demotivating than not being trusted to act like a responsible adult. When a system is designed by a two-percent
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minority who might get something wrong, you are holding the other 98 percent hostage – employees who have the intention of getting it right.” Reynolds urges companies to improve the employee experience, including the language and tone used. “What employees sometimes have to experience can be awful. We’d never accept that in the customer landscape,” she says, adding it impedes staff from achieving great work. To bring change, people need to quantify the root of the problem with its impact on business performance, Reynolds suggests. “If you listen closely, it usually comes down to the issue of trust 99 percent of the time.”
Nicola Fan Director She Objects Carlo Imò President Kering Asia Pacific Dr. Mario Liong Assistant Professor Centennial College Shannon Van Sant Editor Moderator: Su-Mei Thompson CEO The Women’s Foundation
The Future of Work Michelle Lam Founder The Spoilt Experiences Group David Lynch Managing Director and Head of Technology & Operations, HK & Mainland China DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Limited Emma Reynolds Co-Founder & CEO e3Reloaded Moderator: Stella Abraham Head, Residential Leasing & Relocation Services, HK JLL
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2015 AmCham WOI Award Winners: (Front row, from left) Kimberly Cole, Su-Mei Thompson, Claire Hsu; (Back row, from left) Michelle Sun, Pauline Wong, Karin Ann, Anthony Rose
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Professional of the Year
Kimberley Cole, Head of Sales Specialists, Asia, Thomson Reuters By Leon Lee
T
hrough her 25-year career with Thomson Reuters, Kimberley Cole has moved eight times, working in three continents. With each move came opportunities and challenges. Cole has held several roles in marketing, product management and sales in the organization such as Global Head of Marketing Operations and Head of Marketing Asia. She has risen to become one of the company’s most senior female executives and part of its Asia Pacific executive team. As Head of Specialist Sales for Asia Pacific, she oversees a team of over 150 sales specialists for the company’s financial and risk business, worth US$6.5 billion. One of the keys to her success was taking advantage of opportunity she was offered. She believes that people should take the risk and jump at any opportunity even if they’re not sure they have skills, in order to find out. Another is to be clear about what
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you’re willing to do. “The example I give here is I had already been overseas, having worked in the UK. So when I moved back to Australia for a few years, people had assumed there is no way that I would take another overseas assignment since I’d been away, I’d returned home, and I had children,” Cole says. “I didn’t realize that the assumption was being made until I stated the fact to the managers that I would definitely be willing to go overseas again. Then suddenly, all of these opportunities were presented that I wasn’t aware of.” Assumptions and bias like those are commonly made, consciously or unconsciously, by men and women. But over the last 25 years, she has seen a lot more focus on gender balance. At the beginning of her career, the issue had less of an impact. “I think in my 20s and 30s, I didn’t really see there was an issue. I didn’t believe that I couldn’t reach the very top. But, as you then move into your 30s to 40s and you see there are very few women at the top, I think your views of what needs to happen change a lot.” “Now, when I’m getting closer to my 50s, I think I am a supporter of quotas because it hasn’t changed enough in my 25 years and I can’t say, without quotas, that it will change,” Cole says. She points out that Norway and other Scandinavian countries have 40 percent of women on boards because they set a target. As an advocate for change, Cole is on the advisory council for women on boards at the Women’s Foundation. In 2009, she co-founded and chaired Women in Finance in Asia, a forum for women in financial services with over 1,700 members. At Thomson Reuters, she is Asia’s regional head of the Thomson Reuters Inclusion Council. She has supported initiatives to increase the number of female candidates and interviewers for promotions. She is part of the Women@ Thomson Reuters, coaching and mentoring employees, and has intro-
duced the Impact & Inspiration webinar series which showcases female talent. “I think we have incredible role models, internally. We’ve got amazing journalists, terrific marketing people, amazing global business directors, strong female professionals in finance, lawyers and scientists, etc. We’ve got so many amazing people and women, and I want to make sure we have an equal voice of women - both written on our internal internet as well as spoken.” In June of this year, she co-founded the first Trust Forum Asia, a conference the company runs in London that tackles the issue of human trafficking and modern day slavery. She and a team of volunteers spent over six months organizing one in Asia where more than 200 business, government, legal, academic and NGO leaders attended. “When you look at the split of where slavery exists, almost 70 percent of the slaves in the world are in Asia. We think it is brilliant that we do this in London, but the problem is here, so let’s create the sister event in Asia,” Cole explains. “There still is a lack of a way. It’s not clear for people how they create action. We want it to be around action and driving action. We’ve partnered with NGOs; we also have some business solutions using data which is core to our DNA. We want to make sure that we help the NGOs and the business community in general use data to stop this pretty horrific problem.” With the success of the inaugural conference in Asia, they’ll be holding the conference again next year in Singapore. Despite all her success and accomplishments, Cole still gets taken aback with recognition. “It’s always staggering when something like this happens just to see how many people there are supporting you and cheering for you. It’s always just terrific to sort of feel that maybe what you’re doing is helping more people than you realize.”
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Best Company for Women
State Street Bank & Trust By Nikki Park
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t many companies, gender diversity is viewed as something “nice to have.” But according to State Street Bank & Trust, the commitment to diversity is not just the right thing to do but a key driver of innovation here in Asia Pacific. “As a global player, we value the quality of every individual’s experiences, perspectives and capabilities that make our more than 15,000 female employees unique,” says Pauline Wong, Senior Vice President and Head of Global Services, Hong Kong. “Our intense and sustained attention to diversity actually helps us with the bottom line. It provides us with the advantage of attracting and retaining a strong workforce that feels fully engaged, valued and recognized.” State Street first set off its diversity and inclusion goal in 2011, with a target of increasing representation of females at senior level globally. In early 2015, the target was further expanded to include middle-management level with an action plan requiring every workforce globally to contribute to the diversity goals.
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Wong points out that women, who make up half of the company’s workforce, should succeed in every level of the organization. “Diversity goals should not be limited to senior executives but [should be] moved down to the next levels so that we can build the pipeline of talented women.” With its diversity initiatives, State Street now outperforms the financial industry significantly in total women workforce and stands firm as the only company with 50 percent female representation at the senior executive level in Hong Kong, compared with the industry average of 28.4 percent. Senior executive-level positions held by women have also increased by seven percent from four out of 16 senior vice presidents (SVPs) in 2010 to 15 out of 46 in 2015. The diversity and inclusion goal of State Street is not just about ticking off boxes. Wong emphasizes that having as many female employees as possible would not make any difference if the company does not provide a culture where employees feel that they can speak up and that their voices are heard. State Street’s female SVPs, such as the heads of Global Services in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei and Korea and head of Client Services in Japan, are empowered with critical leadership and decision-making responsibilities. The executive promotion process was also refreshed to ensure that a diverse slate of candidates is proposed. Between July 2014 and June 2015, 2,596 women staff were promoted, comprising 43.95 percent of the total number of employee promotions. “We established the target from top-down but we also have engagement groups within the organization, which is more of a bottom-up strategy,” Wong explains. “In a lot of the countries and markets where we operate, we have set up professional women’s networks where groups provide mentoring and sponsorship to connect like-minded colleagues.” State Street also launched the WISE (Working Inclusively Supports Excellence) training program in 2011 to create awareness around unconscious bias and to build an inclusive work environment. Nearly 3,000 managers
have completed the training course, and an online training program will soon be available to cover all employees. On the practical level, the company provides a comprehensive flexible work program, which aims to meet various personal and family demands of their workforce. Its employees can also access paid and unpaid parental leave while the Working Parents’ Network supports working mothers and provides advice prior to taking parental leave and when preparing to return to work. Additionally, in most of State Street’s global offices there are reserved office spaces known as “Mother’s Rooms” to accommodate nursing mothers. “For all those programs we have to go through an evaluation process periodically to assess their efficiency. They do not remain static but constantly evolve over time,” Wong notes. State Street is particularly optimistic about the current situation and the future of diversity in Hong Kong. “The awareness in the last few years has improved dramatically. Progress in our region will speed up and become more incremental,” Wong says. “Across organizations in APEC, not just at State Street but people in general, are just more and more aware of the importance of diversity and inclusiveness. We have a relatively bigger office in Hong Kong, hence support and attention are much more visible than other industry peers. The government is also advocating to increase the management representation of women from the current 10 percent to 30 percent by 2022.” When asked to provide a piece of advice to women who are just starting their careers, Wong says it is important to share your ambition with someone else. “I’ve talked to many of my peers and we all agree that in Hong Kong, if you do your best and push your limits, you will be what you want to be someday. But apart from working hard and pushing your limit, you have to share your ambitions, what you would like to achieve with people around you, your partner, family or colleagues. You shouldn’t be alone. Remember that you can always reach out to people for support.”
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Non-Profit Leader of the Year Su-Mei Thompson, CEO, The Women's Foundation By Blessing Waung
I
f there’s one person in Hong Kong whose name is synonymous with advocating on behalf of women in the workplace, that person would be Su-Mei Thompson. CEO of The Women’s Foundation for the past six years, Thompson works tirelessly to empower working women, as well as the men they work with, in order to even the gap and help women achieve their full potential. Before working at The Women’s Foundation, Thompson worked in the private sector for nearly two decades, initially as a corporate finance lawyer in London, and later moving to plum
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roles at The Walt Disney Company, the Financial Times, and Christie’s in Hong Kong. In 2008, while serving as the co-head of Asia for Christie’s auction house and after having her second daughter, Thompson decided to take a year off from work in order to spend time with her family. “It was during this year-long sabbatical that I realized how hard it is for women who give up work or return to the workplace, and how much confidence, courage and determination it takes for them to overcome the perceptions and biases that employers have about part-time staff and a lack of commitment,” Thompson say. With this realization, Thompson relished the opportunity to work with The Women’s Foundation, citing the quality of its research, coupled with the organization’s high-caliber content, something ingrained in her having worked with the FT. She also sought the chance to design and implement impact programs, which she cited as a task that “basically marries global best practices and innovative ideas with local knowledge and the local context.” “In my experience, different standards apply to men and women leaders – assertive successful women often attract pejorative comments about having sharp elbows or not being team players. At the same time, women are all too often branded as ‘over emotional’ or accused of having favorites,” she say. “As a woman leader, you need to get used to the fact these kinds of conversations about you are taking place and to not to let it bother you,” Thompson asserts. “As a male manager, you need to realize that the environment you think of as a meritocracy may not be quite so equitable, and you should encourage feedback from your teams about your management style and whether this is inadvertently preventing or discouraging female colleagues and subordinates from speaking up or advancing their careers.” Encouragingly, she says that she has seen a recent trend where men are increasingly engaged in the dialogue for gender equality, citing the example of the 30% Club in Hong Kong, which
advocates gender diversity on executive boards. Additionally, she believes that framing parental leave as a genderneutral issue encourages the recognition of men wanting to be more involved with their family. Both maternity and paternity leave can be cast in a more positive light for all company employees. The project Thompson and The Women’s Foundation are currently working on is titled She Objects, a documentary that explores the portrayal of women in the Hong Kong media, and its correlation to sexual harassment cases, rising eating disorders, and lack of ambition to aspire to leadership roles. “All too often, news reports unduly scrutinize women leaders for their appearance instead of judging the substance of their actions. And we’ve all read pieces which implicitly shift the blame to female victims of harassment by commenting on what they were wearing or whether they were drinking instead of focusing on the really important question of why in the 21st century men and boys continue to perpetrate violence against women.” “We need to mobilize widespread support for a greater willingness to scrutinize and call out egregious programming, advertising and news reports,” she says. Altogether, Thompson sees bright spots in Asia, with Mainland China having one of the highest percentages of senior female managers worldwide, at 38 percent. Additionally, she believes that the rise of female political leaders in South Korea, Myanmar and Taiwan is encouraging. There is still some ways to go, though, with traditional mindsets in the home and rigid organizational structures in the workplace serving as the largest barriers. Already, according to Thompson, numerous studies demonstrate that gender diversity creates better business, more effective governance and enhanced customer engagement. With organizations such as The Women’s Foundation paving the way, Hong Kong will continue to make this a priority on everyone’s agenda.
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Entrepreneur of the Year Karin Ann, Co-founder & Principal, International Montessori School By Leon Lee
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ntrepreneurship was not on Karin Ann’s mind when she started International Montessori School (IMS) with Anne Sawyer in 2002. For them, it was just identifying a need in the community. “A group of parents looked around what was available in the education landscape of Hong Kong and wanted
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something different. We wanted something that was more child-centered, something that looked at nurturing a child as an individual from all aspects. So we did our research and we decided to use the Montessori method,” Ann explains. The Montessori method of education was developed by Dr Maria Montessori and promotes education by doing. It encourages children to explore and learn through purposeful, problem-solving activities at their own pace. From the beginning of one school with 70 students, IMS has grown to 900 students spread among four campuses in the Mid-Levels, Ap Lei Chau, Tin Hau and Stanley, offering the Montessori education at both kindergarten and primary levels. The school is the only accredited Montessori Primary School in Greater China and the second one in all of Asia. Ann attributes the success of the school to the method and its Chinese program. From the very beginning, they wanted a strong dual-language program. “Many people want to learn Chinese well, and many international families are looking for it. It also appeals to local families or Eurasian families who opt for an option other than the local schools but still want a very solid Chinese program,” Ann says. Ann understands the pressure firsthand having grown up in Hong Kong attending local schools. While she thrived in the local system, a number of her friends did not. But once they went to study overseas, they flourished and became very accomplished. It was eye-opening. “I think when I became an adult and saw how children were learning, I felt that the pressure and the road to learning were actually more severe than they were in my time. I looked at that and thought there has got to be a better way to do this. These children are sacrificing their childhood and I don’t believe that they will end up at a better place. That’s what drove us to go and look for a much more whole-child approach to education,” the principal says.
“My upbringing in Hong Kong absolutely influenced what I wanted to do, what I thought would work and also what I wanted to do for Hong Kong. Hong Kong is my home and I’m very rooted here, so being able to add this to what’s available in education in Hong Kong is really very meaningful to me.” Prior to starting IMS, Ann spent 10 years in the business and finance field, experiences that have proven to be valuable in running the school. She mentions how heartbreaking it is to see passionate educators start schools but fail because they lack the background and ability to manage it effectively. “Running a school is very operational, very detail-oriented. We spend a lot of time to understand the business side like finance and risk-management and make sure those structures are in place and very well thought through.” Ann says that you have to be able to foresee and plan for issues like property risks in Hong Kong which are enormous. If they didn’t, she believes the school would have failed after five years. Besides being very much involved in the day-to-day school operations, she’s also very active in promoting the Montessori education in the region. She provides Montessori training to the local education community, and in 2014 she co-organized and hosted Hong Kong’s Inaugural Montessori Conference attended by 260 teacher delegates from 26 countries. When asked whether she saw herself as an educator or entrepreneur, Ann says she started as an educator. Passionate about the Montessori method, Ann and Sawyer hired the best people to provide education. Looking back at how the school has grown, she believes she is also an entrepreneur. “My father was an entrepreneur but I never had aspirations to become one. I started the school because I wanted to do education. I never saw it as my path, but I think that because it was what I found loving to do after business and finance, it really proved that when you find what you love, it happens.”
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Master of the Arts
Claire Hsu, Co-Founder & Executive Director, Asia Art Archive By Blessing Waung
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hen Claire Hsu returned from London to Hong Kong fresh out of graduate school, she had no idea of the adventure on which she was about to embark. “I was 24 when I co-founded Asia Art Archive (AAA). It came out of the realization that alongside major
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economic, political and social development happening in the region, there are also major developments within the cultural sphere as well,” Hsu says. After receiving her bachelor’s degrees in Chinese and History from the School of Oriental and African Studies, then her master’s degree in History of Art, Hsu returned to Hong Kong having worked in the Chinese department at famed auction house Christie’s in London. AAA is an independent nonprofit dedicated to the documentation and activation of art history in Asia, within the global context. To many who are familiar with Asian art, AAA is recognised as the foremost resource on Asian contemporary art across the globe. Hsu’s personal interest is in visual art, which she says has seen great changes in the region over the past two decades. With the rise of Asia’s economy, a burgeoning interest has emerged in the art sphere. However, there is still a dichotomy between the way things are and the way they aspire to be. “There’s very little scholarship and very little material available in the field, whereas in the West you have public institutions,” Hsu says. “We saw that it was very important to enrich [this region] and to expand to include art history from Asia.” Through government and corporate funding, the Asia Art Archive has been able to raise more than HK$160 million, Hsu says that the challenge lies ahead in showing others why the organization’s aims are so important. “We have a board of directors who are very important in supporting the organization. We receive some government funding that’s about eight percent, and 30 percent comes from private individuals and foundations. We have a little bit of corporate support as well but not very much. Corporate support is more difficult. I think corporates tend towards business, tend to support kind of bigger exhibitions that might have access to audiences.” Altogether, the collection comprises more than 50,000 physical and digital records of material. AAA has collaborated
with local and international institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Asia Society, The Getty Center, Seoul Museum of Art, and many more. Through collaborations with other institutions, and especially through presenting public programs, Hsu hopes that AAA will be able to welcome those to access both its physical library and its website, which has had more than four million visitors. Artists and galleries alike collaborate in order to educate and inform. Additionally, the importance of diversity of the workplace is clear for Hsu, since she has had what she calls an “amazing community of mentors around me.” To give back, Hsu has mentored many of her employees by hiring them directly from university, then providing an opportunity for them to work in the art field and develop their careers the same way that she was able to. Through her work with AAA, Hsu has been honored with a fleet of awards, ranging from being recognized as a Young Global Leader at the 2013 World Economic Forum to being named in Art Review’s “Power 100” list since 2009. Hsu has also lent her expertise to other projects in Hong Kong, such as formulating the concept for the M+ visual culture museum that is in progress in the West Kowloon District. She also volunteers on the advisory boards of Baptist University, Lingang University, the Guggenheim Asian Advisory Council, and the Asia Society Hong Kong Gallery advisory council. She says that there are many resources available to those who are interested in her line of work, especially as the sphere diversifies and widens in Asia. There are indeed courses available, such as those at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where students can learn about cultural management. But Hsu’s journey with AAA has truly been a baptism of fire. “But my area of interest is very much on the creative side, on the content side,” Hsu says. “These are the signs that we are figuring out as we go ahead and as the organization grows.”
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Young Achiever of the Year
Michelle Sun, Co-Founder, First Code Academy By Channy Lee
M
ichelle Sun is a talented young woman. At 28 years old, she is an experienced investment analyst, growth hacker, software engineer, and her resume continues to grow relentlessly as she pursues a career in digital literacy education. Following the conviction that coding is the new universal language in the digital age, Sun co-founded First Code Academy in 2013. First Code Academy is a programming school based in Hong Kong and Singapore that aims to empower the next generation to become creators
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using technology. The courses offered regularly are designed for kids and teens of age 6 to 18, where students are met with the chance to create their own software in a whole new medium. The courses equip the students with the ability to analyze and solve problems structurally as well as transform ideas into a product with creativity. The educational start-up converges perfectly with Sun’s two prime interests - technology and education. Although it is an innate quality of hers to enjoy problem solving, being the first initiative of its kind in Asia meant an ordeal just looking for people interested in partaking in the initiative. However, she finds no productivity in thinking about what to complain about. Accordingly, Sun also has no particular complaints about limitations she might have faced because she is a female entrepreneur. “It’s hard to say there were problems I encountered in the process because I’m a woman, because I can’t really tell them apart from all the other problems any entrepreneur would face,” Sun explains. She adds that her inclination to always focus on opportunities in things rather than limitations has helped her significantly in always striving for the best results. Sun initially saw the need for an educational institution like First Code Academy as she observed how digital natives interact with technology. When she was volunteering to teach programming to primary and secondary school students during her time working at Silicon Valley as a software engineer, she realized that children with early exposure to technology learn the relevant skills without much inhibition to the realm of technology. They approach technology just as they would approach learning how to dance or a new language. The experience of teaching digital natives also made her reflect on her own experience of growing up in an all-girls school in Hong Kong. It came to serve as the primary reason that she settled back in her home country with the initiative.
“Asian education - the ones I’ve gone through - is very limiting in terms of creativity. I think technology is a newly emerging tool that can solve a problem and help students be more open in creating things and expressing themselves by building their own software,” she explains. Sun was first exposed to coding at a women-only programming bootcamp at Hackbright Academy. Mirroring the experience, she taught coding in Hong Kong for the first time at a female-only workshop. “There’s not enough women in the technology field,” the lead coding instructor at First Code Academy says. “I’m a huge beneficiary of encouraging more women to go into technology.” Women Who Code Hong Kong is another initiative she co-founded that exemplifies such passion. The non-profit organization offers workshops for women and provides a platform where they can pursue a career in technology. The mission statement put forward by the organization is that innovation is driven by diversity and that the quality of output from the industry will be heightened with less underrepresentation of women in the field. The significance of pushing for diversity driven innovation - having a higher number of females in the tech industry - is that it would benefit both men and women in the workplace as well as consumers on a global basis, Sun says. To illustrate the relationship, she explains that when numbers show that women are just as active, if not more, on social media platforms than men, a more gender-balanced workforce in building these platforms would result in an improved overall user experience. “Empowering women has always been very close to my heart. What I hope to become is an example – not really an example – but more female entrepreneurs and people will follow suit. They should start with what they can do. Mine was technology and teaching. Others will have their talent in something else and they need to use that to empower themselves and the future generation,” she says.
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Champion for the Advancement of Women Anthony A Rose, Chairman & CEO, House of Rose Professional By Channy Lee
“I
t was my moment of victory,” Anthony A Rose says, describing the sight of 443 people in their seats early in the morning for the Break the Ceiling Touch the Sky Summit, an event that endorses the success and leadership of women. “I have never been to any event in Singapore where people are in their seats by 8:15 in the morning. And out of the 443, only three people left early at the end of the day. There were 440 people in their seats at 6pm when the summit closed.” Rose and his company, House of
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Rose Professional, a professional firm in Singapore providing services related to public relations, publishing and people services, hosted the summit where 40 international business leaders recognized and showcased the success and leadership for women. Prior to starting his own business, Rose served in a leadership position in Walmart Asia Headquarters with a team composed of all females. With the talent pipeline he built in Walmart Japan, a female talent was promoted to become a VP to lead the local chapter of the organization for the first time ever in history of Walmart Japan. The motivation to support gender equality so vigorously came from his mother. “Watching her, it became very apparent that in terms of capability, there is no difference in capability between women and men. What changes as we grow is the social conditioning. Society conditions men and women to behave differently,” he explains. Rose deems both his parents as his biggest inspiration - his mother for supporting her family while running her own kindergarten and his father for impeccably supporting her through her career. He explains that he has learned more from his role models than from any leadership training. “I was convinced that women are making an incredible difference,” Rose says, speaking of how he gradually developed the passion of empowering women as he watched his parents. The working environment he advocates and actualizes is one where talent utility is maximized without discrimination against gender, and every talent is kept track of. On the same line of thought, Rose believes that men should approach gender equality through doing what they are each capable of. The belief echoes his personal philosophy that each individual’s talent should be utilized to their full potential. The “He For She” mindset also derives from his familial background, and is a basis on which he argues that
male involvement is key in achieving gender equality. “Women can’t do it without men. Currently only 4.5 percent of CEOs in big businesses are female. 94.5 percent of the top jobs in business - the CEOs are men. So if you are excluding men from the discussion, you are excluding 94.5 percent of the most important people in business who can help women get to where they want to be and can help women and men to gender equality,” Rose says. With the compelling set of data, Rose asserts that it is important to make opportunities for men to help. “Many men want to help. It’s not as if all men are opposed to women being in place of power. No, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think men want to help but they don’t know how to help or they feel awkward to help,” he points out. In addressing such a problem, the strategy put forward by the summit was sharing what is being done for empowerment of women at the workplace. He repeatedly emphasizes that instead of complaining about what is not being done, it needs to be shown what is being done so that those with the exposure can leave the room feeling positively inspired and say ‘Hey, I can do that.’ With the success of the summit, an Indian edition of the conference was planned for, immediately. Break the Ceiling Touch the Sky Summit – India is to happen in February 2016, designed to suit the relevant circumstances of India and the culture of male dominance that he believes need to be fundamentally addressed. A new book of his is also to be published in the same month. He hints the book will be about having the dream job. Rose persistently moves to champion for causes he strongly believes in. “There is a beautiful phrase I like to use. ‘The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.’ You have so many people talking about it. For me it’s about taking action, it’s about being an example, it’s about doing something small and growing into something big.”
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FINANCE & ECONOMICS
An Economist’s View on US and China Wells Fargo’s top economist Dr John Silvia weighs in on key issues in the US and China, from a hike in interest rates by the US Federal Reserve in December to China’s recent economic woes, declining Renminbi and five-year development plan
By Nan-Hie In
K
ey events in the coming months will be closely watched and followed, for they will have a significant impact on China and the United States among other markets globally. As a number of economically significant events has already taken place at the end of 2015, what are some of the latest trends that will affect the global economy in 2016? Much attention has risen from the Federal Reserve’s meeting in December in which the US monetary policy took the direction of an increase in
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interest rates from near zero, although marginally, for the first time in almost a decade. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has decided to include the Chinese currency, Renminbi (RMB), in the special drawing rights (SDR) basket, a potential game-changer for Mainland China. Dr John E Silvia, Managing Director and Chief Economist at Wells Fargo, has precisely predicted back in early November [at the time of writing] that an interest rates hike by the US Federal Reserve in December was more than likely. And he was very optimistic about a landmark move by the IMF on the Chinese currency.
“Within the next three months to a year, [Renminbi] is going to be part of IMF’s special rates [basket] for China,” he noted at an AmCham luncheon late last year, while elaborating further on the economic impact of such move and providing an outlook for the world’s two largest economies.
The US economy The fundamentals of the US economy look positive overall. On growth, the US economy – the world’s largest – has expanded by about 2 to 2.5 percent for the last four years, and Silvia predicts the trend to continue to 2016 at 2.5 percent GDP growth. With less than a year to the 2016 US presidential election, a number of candidates on the campaign trail, including Jeb Bush and Chris Christie with ambitious plans to supercharge the economy, have touted greater promises of 3 to 4 percent growth, driven by a shift of national policy and spending. Silvia calls such talk “hooey.” “It’s great politics but it has nothing to do with the economy; basically 2 or 2.5 percent is what it is,” he rebukes. Meanwhile, the labor market continues to improve as the unemployment rate is down to around five percent. The Wells Fargo economist notes the labor force is undergoing a structural shift across the nation, as evidenced in areas such as Charlotte, North Carolina where there is a gap between well-paid professional services providers and manufacturing workers coming from an old textile industry which continues to struggle in the city. Much data reflects this dichotomy between manufacturing and the services sector in the US. The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing Index, an official indicator of the nation’s manufacturing activity, recorded a mark of 50.2 in September. The mark of 50 is the line between growth and contraction. The recent reading suggests a marginal increase in activity. According to Silvia, the manufacturing sector has been hurt by a stronger US dollar as American-made goods are more expensive to export abroad. The
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current conditions also make some US goods less competitive than those of other markets at an advantage with their currency exchange rates. “The perception of slower global growth has also had an impact on orders and production in the manufacturing sector in the US,” he adds. In contrast, the services sector in the US is doing better as the ISM Non-Manufacturing Index in September registered a mark of 56.9 – a trend Silvia attributes to the strength of the domestic consumer in 2015, which has been growing since 2010. “The phenomenally strong American consumer is in part because wages and salaries continue to improve,” he says. As the nation continues to experience exceptionally low inflation and moderate wage and salary gains, these conditions have translated to real income gains which have helped American consumers this year, Silvia explains.
Low inflation US inflation, one of the most important economic indicators at financial institutions like Wells Fargo, has averaged at less than two percent for 20 years, says Silvia. He foresees modest inflation to continue in the US at around 1.5 to 2 percent in the next two to three years. The US, like Europe, will continue to struggle with bolstering inflation as a result of the current global trading environment which also leads to a stronger dollar and weak oil prices. US Federal Reserve officials had previously indicated a target of inflation at 2 percent before embarking on a journey of raising interest rates. The stagnantly low inflation environment had in fact prompted the central bank’s decision to delay a hike, Silvia says, noting the interest rate remained near zero since the 2008 financial crisis. “They thought inflation was going to be two percent in 2015, and gradually it came down to 1.4 percent,” he notes, adding that the central bank lowered its inflation expectation for the year.
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As widely expected in the market, the US interest rates moved up 25 basis points after a decision by the US Federal Reserve policy-setting committee in mid-December. However, it is also quite possible that it be reversed in the near future, based on the Fed’s dot plot showcasing fund rates predictions for 2015 and beyond, published by members of Federal Open Market Committee. “They have continued to lower it in the last three meetings [as of November] and they will probably lower it again,” Silvia says, referring to the data. “It will end up at around one percent perhaps by the end of 2016.” “I’ve looked at the fundamentals, and economic growth doesn’t justify those numbers and neither does the inflation pattern,” he argues, adding that the rate hike would not be that bearish on the market.
China’s economy Despite China’s recent volatility and concerns about an economic slowdown, Silvia remains optimistic. “China is in a big struggle trying to define a new normal that is more open in areas such as the currency and capital markets,” he says. “I take that these things as positives.” Silvia also assesses China’s economy differently than that of the US and explains why he does not interpret volatility of China’s stock market with too much weight. In the US, equities and securities matter more to the overall economy, hence a larger focus on the stock market and its performance. This, however, is not the case in China, he explains. “While the Chinese
Dr John E Silvia
stock market is interesting and growing, the bigger deal in China are bank loans.” China’s equity market is still “a youngster,” and turbulence is expected as the nation changes its margin requirements, Silvia points out. It is similar to the US stock market in the 1950s and 1960s when it went through growing pains and enacted changes in margin requirements. “It is going to take a while for China to fair out how the market operates,” he says. Silvia pays attention to how a country finances its economic activity as a barometer of that particular economy. “Looking at bank finance is much more important [in China] as the country continues to liberalize capital controls, lower reserve requirements and so forth
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and that is quite a stimulus in this economy as oppose to the US,” he says. Like many observers, Silvia is cautious about China’s manufacturing sector but is optimistic regarding its services sector, which has been expanding. Although China’s non-manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index has been decreasing in recent years, it recorded an overall expansion at 53.4 on a recent reading. Noting the “remarkable stability” of China’s GDP growth in the last three to five years, Silvia projects the economy to expand by 6.2 to 6.3 percent in 2016 as China shifts away from manufacturing to a services-based economy. “Transitions can take anywhere from 5 to 20 years,” he says. While some countries such as Russia, Argentina and Brazil have never fully made the tradition, he expects China to be more successful. The inclusion of RMB in the SDR basket will essentially allow the market to vote on China’s policies. “When China decides to do something in respect to public policy, you’ll see the exchange markets vote on whether they think such move is favorable or not for the currency and the economy,” Silvia says. “China is going to be like the US, Europe, Japan and the UK in that it will have a more freely floating exchange rate, and that is going to be interesting.” China’s Fifth Plenum in October has called for a five-year plan to double its 2010 GDP growth by 2020 as well as
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Appropriate Pace of Policy Firming Target Federal Funds Rate at Year-End
Source: Federal Reserve Board, Bloomberg LP and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
per-capita incomes of citizens, among other ambitious reforms to advance the nation. However, Silvia has doubts about some of the aggressive targets and cautions the possibility of overspending and misallocation or inefficient use of capital to achieve these ambitions. “It is great to have ambitious goals, but the question you have to ask yourself is whether this is the old Soviet Union problem,” he says.
Nan-Hie In is a freelance journalist based in Hong Kong covering current affairs, lifestyle and entertainment in Asia. A regular contributor to local and international media outlets, she has written for the South China Morning Post, CNN (Business Traveller), the China Daily, Hongkong.Coconuts. co, Prestige and more.
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AMERICAN TOPICS
AmCham Celebrates
Thanksgiving
F
or Americans all over the world, Thanksgiving is an important holiday to gather with family and friends to catch up and celebrate all the good things they have in life. For many years, AmCham Hong Kong members have come together annually with colleagues and friends for a Thanksgiving holiday luncheon filled with great food, wine, and conversations. “Five years ago, the Chamber started expanding this holiday event,” says Richard Vuylsteke, AmCham president. “As our advocacy activities increased, we decided to invite Hong Kong Government officials from various departments to join the Thanksgiving Luncheon as our guests. It made good sense for us to use this happy occasion to thank the officials with whom we interacted face-to-face during the previous year or so.” This year held at Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, 250 members and guests – including more than 40 Hong Kong Government officials – dined on traditional Thanksgiving offerings
36
including oven-roasted turkey, roasted vegetables, and apple pie, all paired with fine wine. AmCham frequently invites Hong Kong officials to speak at AmCham events, participate in roundtable discussions, and meet with AmCham committees on many of the advocacy issues deemed important to the Chamber and its members. “We have a strong, constructive relationship with the government and are truly thankful for this useful interaction,” Vuylsteke says. During this year’s luncheon, AmCham Charitable Foundation Chairman James Sun presented the 2015 Ira Dan Kaye Community Service Award to Mike and Kay Rawbone, founders of the local charity Sailability, for their wonderful work in helping those in need in Hong Kong. In addition, an Honorary Ira Dan Kaye Community Service Award was presented for the first time to Charitable Foundation Trustee and past AmCham Chairman James E. Thompson in recognition of his extraordinary dedication and contributions to the community over many years.
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HONG KONG biz.hk 2015 INDEX OF ARTICLES
CATEGORY ADVOCACY
AMCHAM MEMBERSHIP
ISSUE
PAGE
Cover Story
SECTION
A Statesman of Vision
ARTICLE
Jan/Feb
8
Cover Story
Governing with Principle
April
8
Trade & Investment
Interview with Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman
May
30
Government Relations
The Inner Workings of LegCo
June
14
Government Relations
DC Doorknock 2015: Right Place, Right Time
Jul/Aug
14
Government Relations
Think Asia, Think Hong Kong
Jul/Aug
18
Trade & Investment
Cambodia Delegation
September
32
Government Relations
Wading the Political Waters of Hong Kong
October
28
China Business
Beijing Doorknock: Focusing on the Big Picture
November
12
New Member Spotlight
Ann Ngan, Director of Hong Kong Academy of Leadership Ltd
Jul/Aug
7
New Member Spotlight
Lucia Tam, Program Director, BounceLimit
September
7
New Member Spotlight
Takayaki Kuboshima, South China Chief Representative, Marubeni
October
7
itochu Steel New Member Spotlight
Fred Birnbaum, Senior VP - Asia, Super Dry International
November
7
New Member Spotlight
Lucien Harrington, MD, Greater China & SE Asia, FutureBrand
December
7
AMERICAN/CHAMBER
Chamber Topics
APCAC: A Regional Resource
April
16
TOPICS
Chamber Topics
What is APCAC?
April
20
Charitable Foundation
A Celebration of Partnership in Giving Back to the Community
June
28
AmCham Ball (Supp)
AmCham Ball 2015 - La Carousel Americano
June
26
Charitable Foundation
Better Education for a Better Hong Kong
Jul/Aug
36
Charitable Foundation
A Charitable Evening of Aesthetic Delight
November
30
Charitable Foundation
In the Same Boat
November
34
American Topics
AmCham Celebrates Thanksgiving
December
36
Editorial
For an Open, Efficient and Globalized Market in China
March
4
Editorial
Third Runway's the Charm
April
4
Editorial
Competitive Expat Packages in the Spotlight
May
4
Editorial
Guiding a Mutually Beneficial Relationship
June
4
Editorial
Riding China's Wild Roller Coaster
Jul/Aug
4
Editorial
Contextualizing the Devalued Yuan
September
4
Editorial
Necessary Input for the Mandatory Provident Fund
October
4
Editorial
Change, It is A-Comin'
November
4
Editorial
Vision, Relevance & Influence
December
4
BIZ.HK OPINION
40
biz.hk 12 â&#x20AC;˘ 2015
CATEGORY
ISSUE
PAGE
Cover Story
Full Speed Ahead with Hong Kong and Shenzhen
May
8
Cover Story
Qianhai: How Can Its Potential Be Fully Unleashed?
May
12
China Business
One Belt, One Road' and One China-led Bank
Jul/Aug
20
China Conference
Adapting to China's Reality Check
September
14
China Conference
In China, A Sruge in Services is a New Normal
September
20
China Conference
Innovating New Business Models in Chinese Markets
September
22
China Business
The Outlook for Multinationals in China's New Normal
September
24
China Business
Understanding WFOEs in China
September
30
CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY
Cover Story
The Social Network for Change
December
8
EDUCATION
Education
US Student Ambassadors to China: 100,000 Strong
Jan/Feb
30
Education
A Center of Modern Managerial Knowledge
March
36
Cover Story
Back in Business
Jul/Aug
8
Education
One School at a Time
November
18
Education
Local or International Education?
November
22
ENERGY
Energy
Energy Reform from a US Perspective
May
18
ENTREPRENEURS/SMEs
Cover Story
A Golden Anniversary of Business Success
March
8
Entrepreneurs/SMEs
Progressing Innovation in Hong Kong
April
22
Enterpreneurs/SMEs
A New Pathway for Chinese Entrepreneurs
May
22
Entrepreneurs/SMEs
The Office 2.0
October
22
Entrepreneurs/SMEs
Good Work
October
26
ENVIRONMENT
Cover Story
Fighting to Breathe
June
8
FINANCE
Trade & Investment
Trading on Both Sides
Jul/Aug
24
Trade & Investment
Down or Up
November
26
Business Outlook
AmCham 2014/15 Annual Survey: Another Year of Cautious Optimism
Jan/Feb
14
Finance & Economics
A Survey of Global Economic Trends
March
28
Finance & Economics
An Economist's View on US and China
December
32
Healthy Living (Supp)
Osteoporosis: the Silent Disease
June
34
Healthy Living (Supp)
Time for a Checkup
June
38
CHINA MARKETS
GLOBAL ECONOMY
HEALTHY LIVING
biz.hk 12 â&#x20AC;˘ 2015
SECTION
ARTICLE
41
HONG KONG biz.hk 2015 INDEX OF ARTICLES
CATEGORY
ISSUE
PAGE
Human Capital
23rd AmCham Human Capital Conference
Jan/Feb
20
Human Capital
Are Teams Driving Superior Business Performance?
Jan/Feb
22
Human Capital
Team Works!
Jan/Feb
24
Human Capital
The Power of Many: How to Use Teams to Drive Superior Performance
Jan/Feb
26
Human Capital
Hard Talk
May
26
INSURANCE &
Insurance & Healthcare
A Savior in Times of Uncertainty
Jan/Feb
34
HEALTHCARE
Insurance & Healthcare
In Search of a Sustainable Scheme
March
14
INTERNATIONAL
Trade & Investment
APEC 2015: The Philippines Means Business
March
19
COMMERCE
Trade & Investment
APEC Matters
March
20
Trade & Investment
On the Agenda for ABAC 2015
March
22
Trade & Investment
APFF: Inclusive Growth & Long-Term Investment
March
24
Trade & Investment
Grooving to a New Beat
June
20
Trade & Investment
Getting Into the Africa Game
Jul/Aug
28
INTERNATIONAL
International Schools (Supp)
A Milestone of Prestigious Accreditation
March
2
SCHOOLS
International Schools (Supp)
Aiming High
March
6
International Schools (Supp)
An American School for Fine Arts
March
10
Early & Advanced Education (Supp)
A School that Grows with its Students
October
2
Early & Advanced Education (Supp)
A Global Classroom
October
6
December
1
HUMAN RESOURCES
SECTION
ARTICLE
Premium Services & Products (Supp) Education Beyond the Classroom
IPR
Intellectual Property
Protecting Alibaba's Intellectual Property
April
26
Intellectual Property
Collaborative Law Enforcement to Combat Prolifit Forgers and Pirates
April
30
Intellectual Property
Protecting Creativity and Innovation
October
36
Jan/Feb
50
MARKETING
Who's Who in Communications (Supp) Damage Control: The Art of Managing a Crisis
PROPERTY
Real Estate
Buying a Property Overseas
Jan/Feb
40
Residential Rentals (Supp)
Next Stop: Taikoo Place
Jul/Aug
2
Residential Rentals (Supp)
Everything at Your Doorstep
Jul/Aug
6
Trade & Investment
The Rise of the Asian Real Estate Market
September
36
Moving to Hong Kong (Supp)
Moving at Ease
September
2
Moving to Hong Kong (Supp)
Learning Never Ends
September
6
Moving to Hong Kong (Supp)
A Better Way to Live
September
10
RELOCATION & MOVING
42
biz.hk 12 â&#x20AC;˘ 2015
CATEGORY TAX & LEGAL
TECHNOLOGY
ISSUE
PAGE
Taxation
SECTION
Hong Kong Budget: Steps in the Right Direction, What's Next?
ARTICLE
March
25
Taxation
Taxing Cocnerns for Americans Abroad
October
32
Trade & Investment
A New Era for Hong Kong's Competition Regime
October
18
Information Technology
The Computing Cloud's Silver Lining
May
14
Information Technology
The Power of Data
June
24
Cover Story
FinTech & Hong Kong: A Good Match?
September
8
December
6
Premium Services & Products (Supp) Information is Key
TRANSPORTATION
TOURISM
US BUSINESSES
WINE & DINE
WOMEN OF INFLUENCE
biz.hk 12 â&#x20AC;˘ 2015
Transportation & Logistics
SF Express: A Case Study of an Expanding Logsitics Company
March
32
Cover Story
Forward Thinking
October
8
Cover Story
The Drive to Grow
November
8
Hospitality & Tourism
An Appetite for America
Jul/Aug
32
Getaways (Supp)
An Unforgettable Stay
November
38
Trade & Investment
Exporting US Quality Worldwide
April
34
Trade & Investment
Hong Kong's Role in a Changing Sears World
June
17
Trade & Investment
Our Man in America
Jul/Aug
30
Trade & Investment
Smart and Safe: Investment in Utah
October
14
Hotels, Wine & Dine (Supp)
Hotel Service to A T
April
2
Hotels, Wine & Dine (Supp)
La Paloma Lands in Sai Ying Pun
April
6
Women of Influence
Breaking the Glass Ceiling
Jan/Feb
44
Women of Influence
Equality Benefits Everyone
September
40
Women of Influence
Evolution or Revolution: how will you succeed and excel at work in 2030?
December
14
Women of Influence
To a Better and Brighter Future
December
16
Women of Influence
Tackling Gender Equality
December
20
WOI Awards
2015 AmCham WOI Award Winners
December
24
WOI Awards
Professional of the Year
December
25
WOI Awards
Best Company for Women
December
26
WOI Awards
Non-Profit Leader of the Year
December
27
WOI Awards
Entrepreneur of the Year
December
28
WOI Awards
Master of the Arts
December
29
WOI Awards
Young Achiever of the Year
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MARK YOUR CALENDAR Jan Setting your China strategy in 2016:
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One Belt One Road, Pearl River Delta, and Hong Kong’s role
Ben Simpfendorfer, Founder and Managing Director, Silk Road Associates, Hong Kong China’s economy is in the midst of historic change. The business landscape is not only changing as a result of slower growth, but also the convergence of major developments such as One Belt One Road and the evolution of the Pearl River Delta. Ben Simpfendorfer’s strategy solutions and executive programs are in popular demand from leading Fortune 500 firms, providing regional and global teams with insights into the region’s fast-changing markets, business models, and management approaches. He was previously chief China economist at RBS and senior China economist at JPMorgan based in Hong Kong. He started his career in Beirut in the early 1990s as a management consultant, and later joined Dun & Bradstreet based in London as the firm’s Senior Analyst for the Middle East & North Africa assessing commercial and political risk. He is author of The Rise of the New East (Palgrave: 2014), examining commercial opportunities and complexities in the Asia market, and The New Silk Road (Palgrave: 2009), exploring China’s commercial ties with the Middle East. He also writes a column for Forbes and Financial Times, being featured regularly on CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg.
Jan 20 Years of WTO, What is Next?
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Karl Brauner, Deputy Director-General, World Trade Organization As World Trade Organization (WTO) commemorates its 20th anniversary, Deputy Director-General of WTO Karl Brauner will share his insights on what is next for the only global organization which deals with the rules of trade between nations. Karl Brauner is a lawyer by profession, with university degrees from Germany and the United Kingdom (Cambridge). After working as Assistant Professor at the University of Bielefeld and practicing law in North-Rhine Westphalia, he started his ministerial career in the legal department of the Federal Ministry of Economics in Bonn in 1983. In 1986-87, he worked at the German Mission to the United Nations in New York. Further postings abroad were in Greece and Australia. For the last 12 years before joining the WTO, Brauner was Director-General for external economic policy. During that time, he was Germany’s member in the European Union’s Trade Policy Committee and took part in all WTO ministerial conferences since the launch of the Doha Development Agenda.
How Will the Rate Hike Affect the Hong Kong Real Estate Market? Marcos Chan, Head of Research, Hong Kong, Macau & Taiwan, CBRE The increase in US interest rates in December 2015 has triggered concerns among investors over the outlook for the Hong Kong real estate market. Join us for a special report by CBRE Research as it benchmarks historical interest rate hikes and property cycles, analyses the key factors that could affect pricing levels, and assesses the potential impact of the interest rate hike on the Hong Kong real estate market. Marcos Chan has a profound understanding of the real estate market in the Greater China region, with over 16 years of property market research experience. He is well-versed with occupier trends and landlord requirements with a strong research background in real estate agency, and he is an active commentator in the media. In his earlier days, Chan worked for a Hong Kong developer where he was engaged in pre-acquisition financial analyses and feasibility studies for investment opportunities in the local and overseas real estate markets. He holds a Master of Science (Real Estate) degree from the University of Hong Kong and a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney.
For information, see website: www.amcham.org.hk
Tel: (852) 2530 6900
Venue: The American Chamber of Commerce in HK 1904 Bank of America Tower 12 Harcourt Road Central, Hong Kong Time: 12:00-1:45pm (Sandwiches & beverages included) Fee(s): Member: HK$280 Non-member: HK$400
Venue: The American Chamber of Commerce in HK 1904 Bank of America Tower 12 Harcourt Road Central, Hong Kong Time: 12:30-2:00pm (Sandwiches and beverages included) Fee(s): Member: HK$280 Non-member: HK$400
Venue: The American Chamber of Commerce in HK 1904 Bank of America Tower 12 Harcourt Road Central, Hong Kong Time: 8:00 - 9:30am (Light breakfast included) Fee(s): Member: HK$180 Non-member: HK$300
Fax: (852) 2810 1289
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20151123-biz-hk-ball.pdf 1 11/23/2015 2:10:29 PM
Saturday, April 16, 2016 6:45pm - 1:00am Grand Ballroom Grand HyaĆ&#x2022; Hong Kong You are warmly invited to join us as VIP guest and sponsors for C
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New York, Empire State of Mind - AmCham Ball 2016
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Put on your dancing shoes and join us for a magical night that will epitomize the urban grandeur and glamor of the city that never sleeps, New York! You will be treated to the unest bespoke cuisine, vibrant live entertainment guaranteed to keep you dancing to the very end and the chance to win one of several exciting Grand Draw Prizes. Book your *Exclusive VIP Table/ VIP Table NOW to avoid disappointment! *Please note added entitlements oĆ&#x152;ered to Exclusive VIP Table sponsors* For more information, please contact: Mary Simpson | msimpson@amcham.org.hk | (852) 2530 6922 www.amcham.org.hk/Ball | #AmChamHKBall
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN HONG KONG
www.amcham.org.hk
December 2015 • VOLUME 47 NUMBER 12