After keeping a low profile for some years, Executive Council member and veteran financial regulator Laura Cha Shih May-lung will be back in the limelight again after her appointment to chair a task force to set up the planned Financial Services Development Council.
Cha's appointment to oversee the creation of the new council - which will promote Hong Kong's role as an international financial centre - came as no surprise to the market.
Cha, 62, had long been tipped for an appointment to a top post at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) or the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). She was also talked about as a contender to become the first woman financial secretary of the city.
'I definitely had no intention to take up a full-time position again, although I was willing to take up duties to serve the public,' Cha said.
Cha trained as a lawyer in the United States and returned to Hong Kong with her family in 1985.
She joined the SFC in 1991 as assistant director for corporate finance and became a key figure in bringing mainland enterprises to the Hong Kong stock exchange. She became deputy chairwoman and executive director of the SFC in 1998, a position she held until she resigned in February 2001. During this period she worked on the merger of the stock exchange and the futures exchange and the three related clearing houses, which were eventually united under the umbrella of HKEx in 2000.