The Jockey Club will lose its executive director of racing, Bill Nader, and gain leading British executive Tony Kelly as the club reorganises its racing division to set itself up for an "expanded and more complex" future.
From August 1, the Jockey Club's racing division will be separated into a business and operations section, headed by Kelly - currently managing director of Britain's largest racecourse operator, Arena - and a Racing Authority, under the club's current director of racing development, Andrew Harding.
Club chief executive Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges said the changes were a follow-on from the club's investment of HK$6.4 billion into its racecourse master plan and the HK$3 billion investment into a new training centre at Conghua near Guangzhou.
"The club's operations will grow significantly in size and complexity over coming years and the organisational changes we will be undergoing will align our structure with our 20/20 vision for the future," he said.
"Tony Kelly has wide experience with major projects, and will be directly involved in seeing through our master plan here in Hong Kong but 40 per cent of his time I see going to ramping up progress at Conghua and getting into the operational realities of it."
Harding will still serve as the secretary of the Asian Racing Federation even as he takes up the position as Racing Authority director, overseeing racing within Hong Kong but also development, including assistance and training across the border in China.
Nader returns to the United States following the Mumbai Asian Racing Conference in January, 2016, after eight years at the club. "I would like to express my deep appreciation for Bill's contribution," Engelbrecht-Bresges said.
