Foreword
ICMA: looking ahead
by Bryan Pascoe
It is a great pleasure to be able to communicate with you all for the first time and share some initial thoughts just one month into my appointment as the new CEO of ICMA. The last 18 months have undoubtedly been a huge challenge for everyone with periods of great market stress and the need to adapt to new, and initially unfamiliar, styles of working. With that in mind I feel very fortunate to be joining at a time when we are beginning to see more normality in how we operate, and the ability to engage in face-to-face meetings, at least in many of the major markets. As global economies emerge from COVID and financial markets normalise, I am very confident that the mission of ICMA to support resilient, well-functioning and efficient international debt capital markets, and to engage with regulators to ensure regulation helps to meet those goals, is more relevant than ever. Post-COVID, the capital markets must play an ever-increasing role as a key driver of sustainable economic recovery and growth. Markets are at their most efficient when they are inclusive, with the broadest pools of participants operating under easily understood, streamlined frameworks, and in the fixed income space ICMA is uniquely positioned to support and drive this agenda. It was indeed this scope and ability to influence market direction and best practice to help future-proof the international debt capital markets that was of huge appeal to me in joining the Association. Joining ICMA, I have been immediately struck by the breadth of the remit, the effectiveness of engagement with stakeholders and the technical expertise that exists within the organisation. Across its committees, forums, councils and workshops there is a huge commitment by ICMA staff and members to engage effectively to drive best outcomes by leveraging the incredible knowledge base and number of touch points that we have access to. At the same time, this breadth of reach brings its own challenges. We will need to be more flexible and commercially agile to adapt to the needs of a fast-evolving market and enhance our relevance as we look ahead. The establishment of the Brussels office is a great PAGE 4 | IS S U E 63 | FOURTH QUARTER 2021 | ICMAGROUP.ORG
recent example of this, enabling our teams to stay close to decision-makers, grow closer relationships with some of our most important stakeholders, and ultimately better serve our members. Looking forward, FinTech and digitisation will be embedded in most if not all market evolution and it is important ICMA plays a very visible role in supporting frameworks to foster consistency with best practice, promoting standardisation across the various strands of the market and communicating developments to members. I believe my own personal career experience in the financial markets marries well with the breadth of responsibilities that we have as an organisation. While I have spent the majority of my 28-year career in key capital markets roles, including Global Head of Debt Capital Markets at HSBC, I also acted as Group Treasurer, covering the asset, liquidity, funding and capital management for the HSBC Group. The combination of these roles has enabled me to view the challenges and initiatives we face through the lens of intermediary, issuer and investor, as well as significant regulatory involvement, which I believe will position me well to balance all our members’ priorities on both the buy side and the sell side. We will also strive to broaden our geographical reach to complement our core European focus, with a strong footprint in Asia already established and growing relevance in other regions, especially in areas such as sustainability, where we have an extremely strong brand, and in the education services we provide to our membership. Having spent over 10 years of my career in Asia based in Hong Kong, and time in MENA also, I will be focused on ensuring we continue to grow our global presence. In Asia, given its tremendous growth and scale, with a large number of markets in very different stages of maturity, the ICMA proposition is particularly well-suited to support orderly and well-framed market development aligned with international best practice, and we have already worked extensively with key partners such as NAFMII in China to this end. On the finance side, capitalising more on our strong product proposition highlighted above as well as other options to
