Webinar – China's Bond Market Reforms: How Can Foreign Investors Reap the Benefits?

Date:June 20 2018 (Wednestday)
Time: 11:00AM (BST) / 06:00PM (HKT) / 06:00AM (EST)

• How does Bond Connect compare to previous schemes targeted towards foreign investors, including QFII/RQFII and CIBM Direct? What are the advantages it offers over those programmes?

• What are the hurdles still remaining for investors using the Bond Connect scheme? European Ucits funds remain locked out of the market because of delivery-versus-payment issues -- are there other problems investors need to see addressed?

• Is the Hong Kong-China Bond Connect only the first step in a wider series of reforms? How much impact could London-China Bond Connect have on foreign fund flows into China's bond market?

• How important is China's inclusion in global bond indices going to be for driving demand from offshore investors? How much has that impacted demand already?

• What reforms do Chinese regulators need to make to ensure a more widespread inclusion in the global indices? Do you see these happening anytime soon?

• What opportunities do wholly-owned foreign enterprises (WFOEs) offer to foreign investors? Are these increasingly going to become the best way to bridge the gap between the onshore and offshore bond markets?

• Finally, when will foreign investors start to buy a broader range of credits in China's onshore bond market? Will China soon become a credit play rather than just a rates play?

Matthew Thomas, Asia Bureau Chief, Euromoney Institutional Investor
Matthew Thomas is an experienced financial journalist who has written extensively about capital markets, bank strategy, economic policy, and the importance and risks of regulatory oversight. He started his career as a news reporter covering the securitization beat, giving him a front-row seat to the early stages of the financial crisis. He moved to Asia shortly after the crisis, and has since interviewed chief executives, finance ministers, national treasurers, and a variety of senior bankers and executives at the centre of Asia’s fast-changing financial markets.

David Yim - Managing Director, Head of Debt Capital Markets, Greater China & North Asia Capital Markets, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited
With over 20 years of experience in debt capital markets, David is the Head of Greater China Debt Capital Markets at Standard Chartered Bank. Prior to joining Standard Chartered Bank in 2015, David was the Head of NEA Debt Capital Markets at the Royal Bank of Scotland, covering investment grade bonds, high-yield bonds and syndication. David has tremendous experience in assisting Chinese issuers, including policy banks, major commercial banks, SOEs and POEs, to raise funds in debt capital markets. David is a CFA and holds a MBA from Imperial College London. 

Adam McCabe, Head of Asian Fixed Income, Aberdeen Standard Investments
Adam McCabe is currently the head of Asian fixed income of Aberdeen Standard Investments (ASI), following the merger between Aberdeen Asset Management PLC and Standard Life plc in August 2017. ASI is a brand of the investment businesses of Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life Investments.  Adam joined Aberdeen Asset Management via the acquisition of certain asset management businesses from Credit Suisse in 2009. Adam worked for Credit Suisse since 2001, where he was a director/investment manager responsible for the development and implementation of its Asian currency and interest rate strategies.  Before that, he was a member of Credit Suisse's Australian fixed income team, where he was responsible for interest rate and currency strategies.  Adam was also head of fixed income for Woori Credit Suisse Asset Management, Korea, where he was responsible for the fixed income and money market portfolio management, investment strategy and processes.  Adam holds a BComm (first class honours and University Medal) from the University of Sydney, Australia and a diploma in global finance from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

 

Eric Liu, Director, China Fixed Income Manager, BlackRock
Eric Liu is the portfolio manager at BlackRock responsible for managing its China bond fund as well as leading the China credit investment team. Before joining BlackRock in 2016, Eric was a PM and researcher at Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore, responsible for co-managing their Asia credit funds and conducting investment analysis on China credits. Previously, he held a variety of positions covering public debt, private debt, private equity as well as structured finance products.  Mr Liu holds a MBA from Insead in finance and earned a bachelor of engineering degree from Nanyang Technological University. Mr Liu is a CFA charterholder 

Freddy Wong, Portfolio Manager, Fidelity
Freddy Wong, Fixed Income Portfolio Manager, Fidelity International Freddy Wong joined Fidelity in 2002, and has worked across different investment functions including technology, trading and portfolio management. Freddy first joined the company as a summer intern, and officially started his career in the technology team focusing on fixed income. In 2007, Freddy was moved to the fixed income team as a portfolio specialist, and soon got promoted to trader specialised in managing Asia credit products. In 2012, Freddy was assigned the additional role of assistant portfolio manager focusing on a portfolio of RMB products while retaining his role as a trader. Freddy fully transitioned to the portfolio management group in early 2017 and will look to manage Fidelity’s onshore Chinese fixed income funds.  Freddy was named as Asia’s Most Astute Investor in G3 Bond Market by The Asset Magazine for six consecutive years from 2011 to 2016. He is a professional manager under the Hong Kong Management Association.  Freddy holds a master degree in finance and a bachelor degree in software engineering from The University of Hong Kong. 

Nick Gendron, Global Product Manager, Bloomberg Barclays
Based in New York, Nick manages the fixed income benchmark index product team at Bloomberg. The main responsibilities of his team include: new product development and research, ETF pipeline and senior relationship management, consulting with clients on development of custom index products, marketing/support of the entire suite of fixed income indices, implementation of robust governance structure and process.  Nick has been with the index business since 1992 at Lehman Brothers and subsequently at Barclays since 2008. In his years at Lehman Brothers he managed the U.S. index team from 1998 - 2005 and managed the global index business from 2005 - 2008.  He also worked extensively marketing the portfolio management tools PC Product and POINT. Nick began his professional career at JP Morgan working from 1987-1992 in their systems development department.  He holds an M.B.A. in finance from New York University and a B.A. in computer science and mathematics from Boston College.

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