The second leg of my Asian double header brought me and the ACT team back to one of our favourite conferences, this year renamed as the Asian Treasury Leaders’ Forum.
Since we moved to a full day format 3 years ago, the event has gone from strength to strength on several different levels.
There’s the backing we get from the local treasury bodies, the positive endorsement of other local and regional professional bodies and trade associations and, of course, the support of the HKMA, Hong Kong’s central bank. Most of all the enthusiasm from the treasury community locally and further afield makes it a great day of networking, knowledge sharing and widening understanding of the profession.
Oh and did I mention the food? It’s always a toss-up between Hong Kong and Dubai for the best conference sustenance but I have to say I have a severe weakness for the roast meats, steamed prawn dumplings, peanut noodles, stir-fried veg and…..well, you get the picture!
We stayed in a different hotel this year and for those of you who remember British colonial days, it was the hotel where The World of Suzie Wong, a 1957 novel by Richard Mason, was written. Suffice to say it was a rather different world in Wan Chai then! Further back in time, 1933 to be precise, the previous version of the hotel on the same site was on the waterfront. Today? Oh, about 1 k of reclaimed land is now between the front door and the ‘fragrant harbour’.
If you’re visiting Hong Kong, take a few minutes to view the history display under the HSBC building which gives an even better sense of how remarkable that development has been. This is one of the great cities of the world – for all sorts of reasons – but in terms of its sheer physicality, for my money only New York City comes close as a testament to our capacity to build and impose ourselves on an environment. And then ride the trams through Central to Causeway Bay or Kennedy Town to get a sense of what millions of ordinary people do to make it through life. Extraordinary.
So a fun few days, hopefully to be repeated. It would be a shame to miss the chance to ask one of the conference venue staff to ‘bang on his xylophone’. About the most melodic way I know to ask people to finish their coffee when we’re ready to restart the conference!
As for the day job, the forum covered a wide and deep range of treasury topics including Brexit, strategic corporate funding, the fintech boom in Hong Kong and latest developments in treasury risk management.
71% respondents at #acthk poll think HK still attractive financial centre for global companies but Singapore & Shanghai gaining
To become true global financial centre, HK must find a way away from just being conduit with China says our panel
U.K. still perceived as important global financial centre even after #Brexit discussed at ACT Asia treasurers forum
Jobs currently being done manually in treasury will be taken over by technology including big data & artificial intelligence #acthk
