Chatroom - Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited

Chatroom
How did you decide to join HKEx?
What were your impressions of HKEx
before and after you joined?
The opportunity to join HKEx came up early last year
when I was working with an alternative trading platform
provider, Chi-X Global, as their chief technology officer.
In my three years there, a primary focus was delivering
high-performance trading technologies to help the firm
win market share from the incumbent exchanges and
compete for business within the growing high frequency
trading market. I viewed the opportunity at HKEx as
one that would allow me to leverage my experience in
a very positive direction, helping HKEx become even
better prepared for future business opportunities and
potential competition.
While I was considering the role at HKEx, I was briefed
on the Board’s decision to support the Next Generation
Programme, involving a number of development
initiatives focused on the exchanges’ technology
platforms for the next 10–15 years. For me, it was a
tremendously attractive opportunity to be involved in
and help lead this effort.
I started working with the Stock Exchange back in the
mid-80s when the first generation market data feed
became available. At that time, I was working for one
of the major global information vendors which took
the feed. After that, I continued to be involved with the
Exchange as an outsider. Frankly, my general impression
from those experiences was that I was curious about
the unduly long consultation and approval process for
IT development at HKEx. I felt that HKEx was very
conservative in terms of new initiatives and that projects
often took a long time to execute.
However, this early impression was not the whole story.
One of the things I learned to understand quickly after
joining HKEx is the importance of its obligation to ensure
that the interests of the broad overall market are taken
into account. This is a slightly different market role than
that played by the alternative trading platforms, which
quickly move as needed and choose their own “sweet
spots” in which to operate at any given time. HKEx
simply has a different set of responsibilities and role in
the market, and this necessarily factors into how we
plan our development roadmap.
6 Exchange • January 2012
How does IT fit into HKEx’s current
strategic plan and its long term roadmap?
What are the IT Division’s main objectives
in the short, intermediate and long term?
Most, if not all, of the initiatives in the HKEx’s current
strategic plan involve IT. IT is the core in delivering any
new services. As a result, IT actively participates in
creating HKEx’s new plans and developing the longterm
roadmap.
Apart from working on new projects, IT needs to
grow in order to allow us to put together a workable
succession plan for each and every department in IT.
This is very important to ensure that IT can continue
to provide a high, consistent service level to HKEx and
its customers.
In the short term, we will carry out an exercise to
ensure all web-facing applications meet our security
standards, and we will focus on the execution of the
Next Generation Programme. Some projects such as
the Next Generation Market Data System have already
started, while others will begin this year. All projects
under the Next Generation Programme are tightly
connected and interdependent, so our execution is
very carefully planned.