Recently, the 18th Frost & Sullivan China Growth, Innovation and Leadership Summit 2024, co-hosted by Frost & Sullivan and LeadLeo, was successfully held at the Jing'an Ruiji Hotel in Shanghai. The theme of this year's Frost & Sullivan New Investment Conference is "Gather Strength to Win the Future", bringing together the wisdom and efforts of the global industry, academia, and investment community to jointly explore new growth points, markets, and tracks for the Chinese economy in the new era.
Dr. Fan Renda, Founding President of the Hong Kong Independent Non-executive Directors Association and Chairman of the Asia Independent Non-executive Directors Association
Dr. Fan Renda, founding president of the Hong Kong Independent Non-executive Directors Association and chairman of the Asia Independent Non-executive Directors Association, was invited to attend the opening ceremony and deliver a speech. He stated that in the current context of heightened uncertainty in the global economic environment, good corporate governance and the healthy development of the capital market are particularly important. The government, regulatory authorities, professional organizations, and listed companies should actively cooperate to effectively address various risks and challenges, protect investors' interests, and promote the sustainable development of the market. In addition, he highly recognized the advantages of Frost & Sullivan as a top representative of the consulting industry in empowering corporate market value management and looked forward to the vision of jointly promoting the high-quality development of listed companies and building a credible and sustainable business world with Frost & Sullivan.
*The following is the main content of Dr. Fan Renda's speech, organized by Frost & Sullivan.
Distinguished Mr. Zou Yaru, Dr. Wang Xin, and all the guests present,
Dr. Wang Xin and I got to know each other many years ago. We both served as judges for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, which was nearly 10 years ago. Since then, we have been continuously in communication, sharing many common views on many business topics, and having a lot of good interactions.
As we all know, before the pandemic, Hong Kong had about 150 listed companies on IPO each year. Once, while chatting with a few investment banking friends, I asked why when a Hong Kong prospectus is opened, the first report is always an industry report, and why it's always Frost & Sullivan that produces these reports. I wondered if there was no other company in the market capable of producing industry reports. The few investment bankers present looked at me and then at each other, really unable to think of another company that could produce industry reports. As we all know, the financial services industry is highly competitive, and I didn't expect a company to have such a high market share in the field of industry reports. I believe that Frost & Sullivan does not only produce industry reports but also offers many other services. This also proves that Frost & Sullivan's position in the industry is quite solid.
Secondly, in many different settings, many friends have asked me what constitutes the best corporate governance. At the beginning, many years ago, I myself did not have a very complete answer to this question. However, after several years of continuous exchanges with many more insightful people in the market, my view is that there is no single best corporate governance system.
Every capital market must find the management methods that are most suitable for its own corporate governance. When I communicate with friends from regulatory authorities, they often tell me that Hong Kong has just introduced this system, so we should copy it; many regulatory authorities around the world have already implemented it; and then they say that some capital market has just issued new regulations and must follow this approach. In fact, many well-governed corporate systems are based on the maturity of the capital market, the composition of its listed companies, its development speed, its investors, and its stockholders. These are all quite important factors in establishing a very complete corporate governance system. It's not about copying systems from the United States or the United Kingdom just because they have them. I believe that each market has its own development strategy for capital markets, and we must formulate the most suitable corporate governance system according to our own capital market strategy.
The Hong Kong Independent Directors Association was established in 2015. Given that a group of us who have served as independent directors in Hong Kong for quite some time felt that there was a certain gap between the regulations formulated by regulatory authorities and our actual practices, we founded the Hong Kong Independent Directors Association in 2015. In a very short period of time, we accumulated a considerable number of members, reaching about 1,300 members today.
In 2019, we discovered that Hong Kong was the first capital market in Asia to introduce the independent director system, and the Hong Kong Institute of Independent Directors is the only such association in all of Asia. We felt it was our responsibility to introduce the work of independent directors to other capital markets. Therefore, in 2019, we established the Asian Institute of Independent Directors. Since 2019, in addition to our original Hong Kong branch, the Asian Institute of Independent Directors now has branches in Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia, continuously introducing the independent director system to other capital markets. Hong Kong is not only a financial center but also has many aspects of corporate governance that are worth learning from by other capital markets.
Finally, I would like to say that every guest here is an important force driving social progress and leading market transformation. I sincerely look forward to working with all of you in the future to create brilliance together. I wish the 2024 Frost & Sullivan Investment Conference a complete success! Thank you all!
