Joseph Yam Keynote Speaker

Professor Joseph Yam was the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, an organization that he was instrumental in establishing in 1993, and headed it for sixteen and a half years. After retiring from that post in September 2009, Professor Yam has taken up a number of appointments. Professor Yam is non-official member of the Executive Council of Hong Kong SAR. He is also Distinguished Research Fellow of Lau Chor Tak Institute of Global Economics and Finance and Honorary Professor of Business School at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He sits on the boards of Union Pay International and Johnson Electric Holdings Limited as independent non-executive director, and on the advisory committees of a number of prominent financial and academic institutions.

Professor Yam had a distinguished public service career of over 38 years in Hong Kong, much of it in a responsible position dealing with monetary and financial affairs. He helped put together Hong Kong’s Linked Exchange Rate system in 1983 and nursed it successfully for a full 26 years since, proactively defending and strengthening the system through the sensitive period before the reversion of sovereignty in 1997, and subsequently through the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 and the global financial crisis of 2008. He master-minded the stock market intervention in August 1998 that prevented a meltdown of the monetary and financial systems of Hong Kong. He introduced many strategic reform measures that helped to ensure financial stability in Hong Kong and develop Hong Kong as an international financial centre. Working closely with the People’s Bank of China, Professor Yam also promoted the establishment of the offshore renminbi market in Hong Kong, a strategic move for the internationalisation of the renminbi.

In recognition of his contributions to Hong Kong, Professor Yam was awarded the highest honour of the Grand Bauhinia Medal by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government in 2009. Over the years, Professor Yam has also been conferred many honorary awards by the private sector, including the international media, and a few honorary doctorate degrees and professorships from local and overseas universities.