The WFE's Women Leaders 2024 – Katherine Ng, Head of Listing at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

Name: Katherine Ng

Organisation: Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited
Job Title: Head of Listing

 

 1. Brief job description

Based in Hong Kong, Katherine leads HKEX’s Listing Division and is responsible for overseeing the company’s listing processes for equity and debt securities and structured products, the regulation of over 2,600 listed companies, and the continuous improvement of its Listing Rules to ensure they reflect international best practices.

With a team of about 270 people, Katherine’s division works on strategic planning, policy development, market consultations and regulator relations. Katherine reports to the CEO and is a member of HKEX’s Management Committee.

2. Short biography

Katherine has 25 years of experience in legal and financial services in London and Hong Kong. She began her career in private legal practice, has worked in an investment bank as legal counsel, and served as political assistant to the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of the Hong Kong Government prior to joining HKEX in 2013. She was HKEX’s Head of Policy for the Listing Division before assuming her current role as Head of Listing in in February 2023.

Katherine is a member of various industry associations in Hong Kong. She is an adviser to Our Hong Kong Foundation, a director of the World Wide Fund for Nature Hong Kong, a fellow of the Aspen Institute, a member of the Hong Kong Academy of Finance and a senior fellow of the Hong Kong Securities and Investment Institute (HKSI). She was a director of HKSI from December 2014 to December 2022 and its chairman between 2018 and 2021.

Katherine holds an MA in Law from Trinity College, the University of Cambridge, and is a qualified lawyer in Hong Kong and England and Wales.

Outside of work, Katherine enjoys swimming, hiking and cooking.

3. What were your professional highlights and challenges in 2023?

Having led HKEX’s Policy Division for 10 years, I was delighted to be promoted to Head of Listing in February 2023, starting the year with a new challenge. As such, 2023 was a busy and dynamic year – one where I eased into overseeing other parts of the Listing Division, such as IPO vetting, issuer regulation and listing enforcement, while also ensuring the delivery of strategic projects for HKEX – the highlights of which are as follows:

As a leading fundraising venue for new economy companies, one of my team’s key responsibilities is to explore how we can continuously improve our regulatory framework to enhance the vibrancy of our market and attract new companies to list with us, while maintaining an appropriate balance for investor protection. To that end, we launched a new specialist technology listing regime in March 2023 – Chapter 18C – to support early-stage technology companies in accessing capital to fund innovative ideas and growth. It covers companies in areas such as AI, robotics, green and renewable technology, and builds on the success of our listing regime for pre-revenue biotech companies introduced in 2018.

Chapter 18C is significant because it provides additional access to funding for companies that are pioneering new concepts and technologies, and which have the potential to re-design, advance and progress our world. So far, there have been a lot of inquiries on Chapter 18C from companies around the world, indicating that they are getting ready to submit applications. Coupled with the biotech chapter – which turned Hong Kong into the world’s second-largest biotech fundraising hub from a very small baseline in 2018 – we expect this new chapter to further elevate Hong Kong’s position as the listing venue of choice for new economy companies.

As a regulator of over 2,600 listed companies, one of our other key responsibilities is to explore how we can continuously enhance our listing rules and ensure listed issuers are following the latest and best international standards. Recognising the increasing urgency of climate change and the role that companies play in it, we launched a new consultation paper in April 2023, seeking market feedback on our proposals to enhance climate-related disclosures by listed issuers – which reference the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) inaugural climate disclosure standard.

HKEX has been a first mover on climate change regulation for years. Annual ESG reporting has been mandatory in our markets since 2016, and our ESG reporting framework already incorporates certain core requirements of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The ISSB’s climate disclosure standard builds on the TCFD requirements, which puts our listed issuers in a good position to progress to the next stage of their reporting journey. The new proposed rules will add a layer of depth to their climate analysis, and we will consider, among others, the ISSB’s Adoption Guide and its recommended approaches to the phasing-in of the ISSB standards before finalising and implementing our new rules.

In 2023, I was also thrilled to see our listed issuers’ progress on gender board diversity. This is a topic close to my heart. When I joined HKEX 10 years ago, I was surprised to find out that many listed companies still had an all-male board, despite the strides made in progressing gender diversity in the workplace. As a company, we are strong advocates of gender diversity and in 2022, we initiated a new rule change that prohibited single-gender boards among Hong Kong-listed companies by the end of 2024. We have also barred single-gender board listing applications since July 2022.

This was something I was particularly passionate about and helped to roll out as Head of Policy within the Listing Division. Our issuer regulation team is in constant dialogue with issuers, providing guidance and support as they progress on their diversity journey. With the transition period coming to an end soon, companies have been making great progress. The percentage of listed issuers with no female director decreased from 32% in 2020 to 20% in 2023. And the policy has created over 200 new female board positions since inception. We are confident that with the new rule change, the vast majority of our issuers will have a woman on their boards by the end of the year.

One of the biggest challenges of our industry is the increasingly complex regulatory landscape. Twenty years ago, regulators primarily reviewed financial performance. But now, they need to look at ESG, corporate governance and internal controls, among other things. To address the growing volume of complexity, we have been incorporating more and more technologies to our regulatory practices. For instance, we have started using AI to review annual reports. We will roll out more technology going forward and I’m excited about the ongoing modernisation of our listing franchise.

4. Tell us about a few of your key achievements?

I feel proud to have worked in both the private and the public sector, which has given me valuable insights into how our two key stakeholder groups operate – i.e. the Hong Kong government and corporates. As a market regulator, we often need to strike a balance between the interests of all market participants and stakeholders, and having a good understanding of differing market perspectives and how to best work with them has served me well in my career at HKEX.

In addition, when I look back on the new listing chapters we initiated at HKEX – i.e. the biotech and specialist technology regimes – I feel privileged to have played a role in supporting companies that are shaping our future and which will make a difference in our children’s lives.

In the same vein, as a regulator, when we enhance our listing rules with sustainability considerations – such as through banning single-gender boards and thus increasing senior female representation in companies – the by-product is that we are also progressing diversity and opportunities for women in our society. And this wider and meaningful positive impact that I get to make in our world will always be a career highlight for me.

5. Who and what inspires you to achieve your professional success?

My mom has always been a source of inspiration for me. She was working full-time when she raised me and my brother. Seeing her juggle so many things inspired me to continuously believe in myself – and my capabilities – when my home and work responsibilities expanded. She taught us that if you put your mind to something, you can do anything. But at the same time, people have their limits. Therefore we can’t push ourselves to the brink of collapsing. And as a mother of three children, I often remember this mantra when things become too much, allowing me to strive for a balance and remain centred.

My mother also taught me that people only learn and do their best work when they are relaxed. If you are tense or nervous, you are not going to enjoy what you are doing and won’t be able to produce your best work. This is something I have embodied my entire career, and I think it has played an important role in my career progression. It’s something that I try to embrace as a team manager too – in that, I often strive to create a relaxed, comfortable but disciplined environment for my team.

6. How have you overcome setbacks, and what have you learned from adversity?

I think the key with setbacks is to not view them as setbacks, but as opportunities to learn. Several times in my career, there were situations when my reality didn’t meet my expectations, which was difficult to deal with. But I started every day thinking: What can I learn? And I reminded myself that there was a reason that I was there, so I tried my hardest to make the best of it. And I’m grateful I took that attitude because what I learned in those situations has contributed significantly to my success today.

7. What advice do you have for other women who aspire to be in leadership positions?

I believe that truly knowing yourself is instrumental to growing in your career. You must figure out who you are and what type of leader you are before you can lead. That comes from going through different challenges, learning something new every time, proactively analysing your successes, and using all the learning you have accumulated to shape your working and leadership style. And this journey never stops – I constantly find new things to learn in HKEX after 10 years of working here!

I also recognise that at a certain level, work can be intense. You need to find your own “medicine” to extract yourself from the daily pressures of work and just relax. For me, I clear my head by going out for a run, swim or walk with our new Labrador before I start work. But it’s hard - I have only started doing this since becoming an empty nester last year!