CEO Blog

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of meeting with many colleagues from all divisions, sharing ideas and being inspired by their enthusiasm, dedication, and overarching sense of mission.

I have also been busy engaging global investors, market participants and other stakeholders, to learn about their aspirations, needs and concerns. Questions like ‘when will China’s economy rebound?’, ‘will volatility persist?’, ‘what is going to happen to the IPO market this year?’ and ‘what have you got planned at HKEX?’ all pop up frequently in conversation.

My work across different functions of capital markets over the past 30 years enables me to appreciate the different perspectives of our stakeholders. I too see a world where a lot is changing.

Some of the established paradigms are being replaced by new world orders, which bring both opportunities and challenges for HKEX. These include changing world orders for geopolitics, capital formation, technology and financial markets.

New hubs for capital and trade are competing with established markets, issuers are changing their preferences for listings, the pace of technological change is accelerating, and technology companies and digital natives are entering capital markets and forcing established financial market players to evolve.

It’s important to be resilient during times of such wide-ranging change. Our company is known for our robust systems and operations, and for strong rules and governance.

But resilience goes beyond that: it means the ability to adapt under stress, anticipate shifts, stay cool-headed in the face of fads, build actionable strategies and capture opportunities as the world orders around us change.

On the subject of capturing opportunities, I see four areas of focus for HKEX.

Technology has been and will continue to be the main driving force for change in the world of capital markets and finance.

We now routinely perform financial transactions that would have been pure science fiction only a generation ago. And that’s just a fraction of the potential disruption, as well as efficiencies, technology promises for global exchanges.

At HKEX, we see this technological innovation as the means to make our business future-ready. Technology is in our DNA; it is the backbone of everything we do as a core financial market infrastructure. It always has been.

Against the backdrop of the transformation of our industry, we are committed to invest significantly for our markets, by further leveraging technology with the purpose of staying competitive, efficient and robust.

From utilising our market data for client solutions, and applying AI to enhancing our operations, to exploring exciting possibilities to advance our market infrastructure, technology will very much continue to be at the heart of how we shape our future as a company.

We have proven that we have the capabilities and experience to develop platforms and solutions that address the needs of global investors, as our portfolio of tech-driven solutions range from listing digitalisation to the Fini IPO modernisation platform; from the OTP-C system for our cash market to LME Select for LME’s derivatives market and today’s announcement of the Orion Derivatives Platform (ODP) development project.

This is why we are taking a significant step to owning our own our digital destiny and making long-term investments in our in-house systems – developing custom designed solutions, reducing time-to-market when we innovate for the benefit of our clients, and maintaining our trading, clearing and risk management in real time.

ODP is a great example – as a self-developed modular-architecture model, it enables us to provide robust, yet flexible and efficient solutions that differentiate us and make us more competitive vis-a-vis our peers. ODP is a multi-year project that underscores our commitment to the diversification of our business, and to Hong Kong’s markets.

Longer term, we will also take a holistic look at elevating our clearing infrastructure, which underpins our financial markets.