UBS Financial Forum: 2020 Reshaping the Norm

David is Head of Equities Americas in CIO Global Wealth Management. He has 25 years of experience as an equity analyst, portfolio manager, and strategist. David’s functional responsibilities include authoring equity strategy research reports; determining the firm’s US equity sector, size and style preferences; and contributing to the firm's tactical asset allocation. David is also a member of the Wealth Management Americas Asset Allocation Committee.

Prior to joining UBS in 2006 David held analyst and portfolio management positions at Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and Thales Fund Management.  

David is a Chartered Financial Analyst®.  He holds a B.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Economics from Penn’s Wharton School of Business.

David has made television appearances on CNBC, Bloomberg Television, and Fox Business Network and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Reuters and other financial publications.

Robert has been a top-tier communications consultant since 1989, following a career in journalism for The Times, The Economist, TIME magazine and Forbes.

Robert has managed investor and media relations for clients at global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller (now BCW); for Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong as head of Marketing & Communications, Asia Pacific; for The Bank of New York as head of Global Communications; and for ACE (now Chubb) as head of global media relations and financial communications. Prior to founding Hamilton Advisors, he served as President, Hong Kong for Edelman. His clients have included many leading firms in the financial services, property, corporate and legal sectors.

Robert is the 2019 Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and a member of the Hong Kong Investor Relations Association. He is a Member of the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong, the American Club in Hong Kong, and a past Chairman of the Council of Public Relations Firms of Hong Kong.

Robert graduated from Hamilton College magna cum laude with a B.A. in English Literature and East Asian History, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received his M.S. in Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a concurrent certificate from Columbia’s East Asian Institute.

Harry Harding is a specialist on Asia and U.S.-Asian relations. His major publications include Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1966; China’s Second Revolution: Reform after Mao; A Fragile Relationship: the United States and China since 1972; and the chapter on the Cultural Revolution in the Cambridge History of China. His edited volumes include China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s; Sino-American Relations, 1945-1955: A Joint Reassessment of a Critical Decade (co-edited with Yuan Ming); and The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know (co-edited with Francine R. Frankel).  He is writing a sequel to A Fragile Relationship on the evolution of the U.S.-China relations from the mid-1990s to the beginning of their trade war.

Presently a University Professor and Professor of Public Policy and a Senior Fellow in the Miller Center of Public Affairs at UVA, he is also Adjunct Chair Professor and Yushan Scholar in the College of Social Science at National Chengchi University in Taipei.  He has recently held visiting appointments at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Harding served as the founding dean of UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy between 2009 and 2014. Before joining the Batten School, he held faculty appointments at Swarthmore College and Stanford University and was a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. From 1995 to 2005 he was Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University, and from 2005 to 2007 was Director of Research and Analysis at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and advisory firm based in New York. He has served on the boards of several educational and non-profit institutions as well as on the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Science and Technology and the U.S. Defense Policy Board. A graduate of Princeton in public and international affairs, he holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.

Frank Ching is a writer and lecturer who has been following developments in Asia, especially China, since the 1960s, when he was with The New York Times. In 1979, he opened The Wall Street Journal’s Bureau in Beijing, becoming one of the first American correspondents to report from China since 1949. For the last 20 years, he has been a columnist, commenting on affairs in China and the Region. At the same time, he has also been adjunct associate professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and with the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

David Zweig (Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1983) is Director, Transnational China Consulting Limited, having formerly been faculty at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as Professor Emeritus. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard in 1984-85. Dr. Zweig studied in Beijing (1974-1976) and did research in rural China in 1981 and 1986. In 1991-92 and 1997, he did field research on China’s “opening to the outside world.” A Canadian, he has lived in Hong Kong since 1996.

He has authored or edited ten books, including Internationalizing China, China’s Brain Drain to the US, and Sino-U.S. Energy Triangles. He is a Contributing Writer to the South China Morning Post. He has consulted recently with numerous companies and organizations, including Aramco’s Vice-President for Research, American Chamber of Commerce (Shanghai), HSBC’s Annual China Conference, the Organization Department of the Beijing Party Committee, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. His two online courses with COURSERA on domestic Chinese politics and “China and the World” have already had 20,000 students.

In February 2020 , LH was appointed as Co-head GFO, APAC. He has more than 25 years of experience in investment banking and wealth management, focusing on China and South East Asia markets.

LH joined UBS in 2010 as the Asia Pacific Head of Institutional Solutions Group in Wealth Management. In 2013, he took up the role of Country Team Head, China International, leading a team of client advisors covering China offshore clients. From March 2018 to March 2019, LH was Regional Market Manager of Hong Kong and Japan International team. In April 2019, LH was Head of Wealth Management China International.

Prior to joining UBS, LH was an investment banker covering Asia Pacific markets focusing on raising public and private capital, and advising corporate clients on mergers and acquisitions.

Tan Min Lan is the Head of the Asia Pacific Investment Office at UBS Global Wealth Management Chief Investment Office, since July 2013. She serves as a member of the Global Investment Committee, Emerging Market Investment Committee and Asia Investment Committee, which formulate the regional and global UBS House View.

Prior to joining UBS Global Wealth Management, Min Lan spent eleven years with the UBS Investment Bank where she held a number of senior appointments. From 2002-2012, Min Lan was the Head of Research and Strategist at UBS Securities Singapore. Over this period, Min Lan was ranked a top analyst in Asia across major institutional investor surveys, including being named the Number 1 analyst in Singapore by Asiamoney for ten straight years. From 2006, she was concurrently appointed the Head of Equities for Singapore, with oversight of research, sales, trading and execution, prime brokerage and exchange traded derivatives. In 2012, Min Lan was made the Global Head of FICC Macro Strategy Research, where she was in charge of teams covering global asset allocation, global emerging markets, fixed income, FX and credit research.
Before joining UBS, Min Lan worked as a senior economist with the Econometric Modelling unit at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as well as an economist and strategist at Merrill Lynch covering the Asian equities markets.

Min Lan holds a Bachelor in Accountancy (Hons) from the National University of Singapore and is a CFA charter holder. She sits on the Board of Trustees of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

Michael Spence’s work profoundly changed the paradigm of microeconomics by teaching that markets are not always equipped with perfect information. He has shown how signaling and screening, major themes of his work, are part of modern people’s daily routine. “Airbnb does two things: they create a market using a network structure and they solve an informational problem. Because I as a host of an apartment am not in the market all that much, and you as a guest may not be in the market that much, but you’re in it often enough for the central player, who keeps very big databases, to be able to evaluate you. And so the crucial part of these platforms is the two-way evaluation system, closing informational gaps.”

After receiving the Nobel Prize for his contributions in microeconomics, Spence dedicated himself to global matters. For example, he took on a project initiated by the World Bank. The challenge: to constitute a framework for growth. Spence has argued that the answer is actually pretty simple: being open to the global economy, the aquistion of knowledge, developing technology and investing. In his opinion, rising inequality, economic waste and failures of political and social cohesion pose the biggest threats to economic growth. “It’s sort of happening again now in lots of places.

With polarization, young people being unemployed, and so on.” With respect to Europe, Spence shows himself worried that countries like Spain and Greece are sailing “into oblivion”. He believes that we need to rewrite the rules of our economies, creating more unity, a centralized banking, regulatory structures under the ECB, a system-wide attempt to overcome obstacles to growth, and fiscal transfers if necessary. The only alternative: to give up the common currency.

Spence has shown how the rise of technology may have a major impact on labor markets across the globe. He points, for example, to the textiles industry as part of the Asian Growth Model, explaining how the whole market may collapse due to increasing automation.

Michael Spence is the former Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a professor at NYU Stern and chairman of the independent Commission on Growth and Development. As a Canadian-born US citizen living in the US, Asia and Europe, he is a true globetrotter. “For a lot of people, reading about life in Peru is sort of like reading about people on Mars, and it doesn’t have to be like that,” Spence knows.

Donna Kwok joined UBS Asset Management as Head of Asia Pacific Strategy in October 2018 based in Hong Kong. Prior to that she was Senior China Economist with UBS Investment Bank. Before joining UBS in 2013, she was Greater China Economist with HSBC Hong Kong, Asia Economist at Macquarie Securities (Hong Kong), East Asia Analyst with Strategic Forecasting Inc. (the US), and Strategy Consultant at Deloitte Consulting (London). Donna holds an MA in International Relations (Economics and China Studies) from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a BA (Honours) in Economics & Management from the University of Oxford.

Winnie Kwan is an equity portfolio manager at Capital Group. She has 23 years of investment experience and has been with Capital Group for 20 years. Earlier in her career, as an equity investment analyst at Capital, she covered global exchanges, Asian utilities and small-cap companies. Prior to joining Capital, Winnie worked with Morgan Stanley in London, Hong Kong and Singapore.

She holds both master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. She also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation. Winnie is based in Hong Kong.

Francis has over 28 years of experience in the wealth management industry. He joined UBS in 2010 where he was Regional Market Manager for Hong Kong before he became Regional Market Manager for China in 2012. In 2014, he was appointed Regional Market Manager of Global Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) Greater China where he is responsible for the UHNW business in Hong Kong, Taiwan and China focusing on clients with more than US$100 billion in invested assets. Francis was appointed Head of Wealth Management Taiwan International in February 2020.

Prior to UBS, he held various senior positions at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan for 17 years. He was Head of the Greater China market at Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific between 2003 and 2010. Before, he was also Head of Taiwan market at Merrill Lynch International Bank, Singapore, and Sales & Marketing Vice President for Taiwan branch at Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith (Taiwan Branch).

Francis holds an MBA from University of Texas and a degree of Bachelor of Arts, Economics from Texas A&M University. He also completed a Leadership & Management Program at Harvard Business School. Francis is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Shih Wing Ching was born in Shanghai and brought up in Hong Kong. In 1978, Mr. Shih established Centaline Property Agency Limited, which has now evolved as one of the largest property agencies in the country, employing more than 60,000 staff and involving in a great variety of businesses including property agency, surveying and valuation, wealth management, information technology development on property data.

In 2005, Mr. Shih launched the free newspaper, am730 and is now a columnist giving comments on current issues of the world, sharing insights as an entrepreneur and even life experiences. Mr. Shih also hosts radio programs and frequently delivers speech in tertiary institutions on all sorts of topics about philosophy, economics, management, and even natural science. As Mr. Shih has diversified interests and his analysis is always based on a macroscopic view, he has become one of the most popular commentators in the Hong Kong community.

With keen enthusiasm for the society's development, Mr. Shih participates in various community services and charity works. He was the Member of Task Force on Economic Challenges and the Member of Commission on Strategic Development.

John Siu is responsible for managing Cushman & Wakefield’s Hong Kong Office which provides a full range of real estate transaction, consultancy and management services to our clients. He is also the convener of the China Business Platform and one of the key leaders of the Guangdong | Hong Kong | Macau Greater Bay Business Platform of Cushman & Wakefield.

John also currently serves as the Co-chairman of the China Business Committee of The American Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong and a member of the Real Estate & Infrastructure Committee of The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.

With over 30 years of industry experience, John’s expertise includes tenant representation & strategies in the office, industrial/logistics and data centre sectors; landlord advisory for Grade-A office developments; and corporate occupier account management. His expertise has made him a resource for interviews by Hong Kong and international media.

John is the Tax Partner and China & Hong Kong Leader in Private Client Services. He has more than 25 years of experience specializing in helping high net-worth individuals and families primarily based in Asia Pacific with Chinese and other nationalities to devise tailor-made tax planning, family wealth and business succession planning to achieve the specific personal and family goals of such clients by using trusts, insurance and other appropriate structures for the implementation of such planning as well as family corporate governance.

He has extensive experience in advising professional bank and non-bank trustees on trust matters and provide training to them on wealth and tax planning. He is also a frequent speaker at wealth forums and tax seminars.

Marina is Group Managing Director, Head of Wealth Management China, with overall leadership and management responsibilities of the WM China business, including the China International market as well as the China domestic business. 

Marina joined UBS in 1995 as a Client Advisor and has since taken on various managerial positions including Desk Head, Country Team Head and Regional Market Manager. She has more than 25 years of experience in wealth management.

Prior to joining UBS, Marina started her career as Management Trainee with Citibank, Hong Kong.

Jennifer Ma attended top schools, St. Paul’s Co-educational College in Hong Kong and Benenden School in UK, before graduating from the University of Oxford with First Class Honours in Economics and Management. Jennifer achieved her Masters in Education at the University of Hong Kong and is the co-author of the Best Seller “Boarding Schools: All You Need To Know”. Jennifer is a Benenden School Trustee, China Oxford Scholarship Fund Panelist, and is part of the University of Oxford Pembroke College Ossulston Circle.

At ARCH, Jennifer is responsible for the development of enrichment programs. She leads the UK and HK consultation teams which specialize in applications for Oxbridge and professional subjects including Medicine, Law, Architecture and beyond; achieving impressive record breaking results year on year.