FCC club lunch with Jake VAN DER KAMP and David WEBB

Speakers:
Jake VAN DER KAMP
Journalist

David WEBB
Editor of Webb-site.com

Topic: WEBB v Jake: An FCC debate on Hong Kong’s controversial extension of the blackout period on share trading by company directors

Two of Hong Kong’s leading market commentators, David Webb and Jake VAN DER KAMP, will debate the wisdom / folly of the blackout period, which is to be extended from two months to three on April 1 after the Hong Kong stock exchange abandoned plans for a maximum 7-month trading ban. Mr WEBB will argue the case for an extension and Mr VAN DER KAMP the case against. The debate will run for 30 min, followed by an audience Q&A.

Jake VAN DER KAMP is a journalist who has taken a break from the scribbling trade after ten years of writing the daily Monitor column in the business pages of the South China Morning Post. Before becoming a journalist he was for 20 years an investment analyst working for, among others, ABN Amro Asia, Morgan Stanley Asia and Sun Hung Kai Securities. Jake is a native of the Netherlands, a citizen of Canada and, for most of his life, a resident of Hong Kong.

David WEBB is the Editor of Webb-site.com. He moved to Hong Kong in 1991 after five years of investment banking in London. He was also an in-house adviser to Hong Kong’s Wheelock and Wharf group, and in 1998 retired to focus on his investments and founded Webb-site.com, a non-profit platform for the promotion of better corporate and economic governance in Hong Kong, which now has over 18,000 subscribers to its free newsletter.

Mr WEBB has been a member of the SFC’s Takeovers and Mergers Panel and Takeover Appeals Committee since 2001. In April 2003, investors elected him as a non-executive director of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited. He was re-elected in 2006, and resigned in 2008 citing concerns over governance. Also in 2003, he financed and launched “Project Poll” which successfully forced blue-chip companies to start counting 1-share-1-vote rather than a show of hands. This eventually led to changes to the Listing Rules which made poll voting mandatory from 1st January 2009. He gained an honours degree in Mathematics from Oxford University in 1986 and prior to that was a best-selling author of games and books for the first generation of home computers. He is a full member of the Hong Kong Securities Institute and was Chairman of Hong Kong Mensa from 1998 – 2000.