Panel speakers pick over hot topics

Featuring the hot topic of China’s much talked-about One Belt, One Road (OBOR) plan linking Asia to Europe and the Middle East. and woman in leadership, discussed just a few days before International Women’s Day, panel topics put under the spotlight at the third SCMP Education Post MBA & Postgraduate Festival were both timely and relevant.

Providing a broad perspective of the China-led OBOR initiative, Dr Joe Fang, chief research officer of the One Country Two Systems Research Institute, outlined how Hong Kong’s strong financial sector could contribute to the comprehensive development strategy, which is expected to require an estimated US$8 trillion of investment to bring infrastructure facilities along the OBOR route up to world standards. “This will create great opportunities for MBA holders either working or thinking about joining the financial sector,” suggests Fang.

Dr Joe Fang, chief research officer of the One Country Two Systems Research Institute

Panel member Henri Arslanian, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) believes Hong Kong’s fast expanding FinTech sector has the professional talent and solution capabilities to play an important role in OBOR projects through making financial transfers and payment systems faster, more efficient and by reducing risk. “In the FinTech space, Hong Kong offers several distinct advantages,” says Arslanian, who teaches postgraduate FinTech and Entrepreneurship in Finance graduate courses at HKU. “Instead of using traditional  bank transfers, which are cumbersome, and Letters of Credit, which can take days to process, FinTech blockchain or payments technologies could authenticate and facilitate such transactions in seconds,” says Arslanian.

Henri Arslanian, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong 

Panel speaker professor Hugh Thomas, associate director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at  Chinese University (CUHK) Business School, made the point that many Hong Kong MBA and postgraduate holders work in tax, law, logistics, international finance and business analytics – areas that are vital to successfully implementing and administering OBOR projects. “For OBOR strategies to work, they need to conform to global social-economic standards, which Hong Kong has the experience and talent to implement,” says Thomas, who is also an associate professor of the School of Management and Economics at CUHK (Shenzhen).