Fidelity’s Kerry Ching named new HKIFA chairman
Fidelity’s Kerry Ching has been named chairman of the Hong Kong Investment Funds Association (HKIFA), the asset management industry’s non-profit representative body in the city.
She takes over from Desmond Ng, chief operating officer and head of sales and marketing for Asia ex-Japan at Invesco Hong Kong, who has served the maximum two terms as chairman. Each term runs from September to September.
Terry Pan, managing director and head of Hong Kong business for JP Morgan Asset Management, has been reappointed as association vice-chairman.
Further, Sam Yu from GAM Hong Kong was also appointed as the only new member to the association’s executive committee for 2011-12. He replaces Jimmy Chan, CEO of Value Partners. The nine other members of the 12-member committee are listed below.
Established 25 years ago, the HKIFA has two major roles: consultation and education. On the former it works with regulatory bodies and industry participants to represent members’ views in the development of rules and regulations.
On education, it spearheads initiatives to enable Hong Kong’s population to better understand the risk/return characteristics of mutual funds and to use them effectively for retirement investment and other financial planning.
At present the HKIFA has 47 fund management companies as full/overseas members on a corporate basis. Together they manage 1,240 funds authorised by the Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) as at the end of July this year involving total assets of more than $1 trillion.
It also has 66 affiliate and associate members – such as trustee companies, law firms and accounting firms, as well as administration companies that provide support to the fund industry.
Its fund management firm members come from Hong Kong, overseas and, in the past two years, from mainland China. This latter point, an HKIFA spokeswoman notes, reflects the role of Hong Kong as a platform as mainland fund firms start to “go abroad”.
Ching joined Fidelity as country head for Hong Kong in 2008 and is responsible for overseeing its Hong Kong business. She has also held various senior positions in Wachovia Global Asset Management and UBS Global Asset Management Hong Kong.
Before UBS she worked at Invesco, initially overseeing client relations and investor services before taking over management of the institutional business for Greater China in 2004.
In the same year she became CEO responsible for Invesco’s business activities in Hong Kong and Singapore. She has also worked at the SFC in Hong Kong as investment products manager.
She is a member of the executive committee of the HKIFA and chairman of the pensions subcommittee.
The nine other members of the HKIFA’s executive committee are: Lewis Leung of Allianz Global Investors HK; Gerry Ng from Baring AM; Katherine Cheung of BlackRock (Hong Kong); Carol Wong from BNP Paribas IP Asia; Isabella Chan from Franklin Templeton Investments (Asia); Bonnie Lam of HSBC Global Asset Management (Hong Kong); Desmond Ng from Invesco Hong Kong; Raymond Kong from Manulife Asset Management (Hong Kong); and Lieven Debruyne of Schroder Investment Management (Hong Kong).