Project Genesis 1.0: Prototype digital platforms for green bond tokenisation

Representatives from the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Securities and Futures Commission are participating in Project Genesis as observers.

Henri Arslanian

Henri is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Hong Kong where he teaches the first FinTech university course in Asia. He also advises many of the world's leading crypto exchanges, investors, financial institutions and tech firms on their FinTech and crypto initiatives as well numerous governments, regulators and central banks on Fintech and crypto regulatory and policy matters. He holds a Masters in Chinese Law from Tsinghua University; a joint Global Executive MBA from Columbia Business School, London Business School, and Hong Kong University; a Bachelor of Law from the University of Montreal (Dean's List of Excellence) and a Masters in Transnational Law from the University of Sherbrooke, where he was awarded the Governor General of Canada Gold Medal for Academic Excellence for having graduated with the highest grades of the university.

Entela Benz

Entela is the CEO and Co-founder of Intensel Limited, a climatech company that combines climate science with technology for predicting climate change risks. She serves as Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Finance, HKUST Business School, delivered several ESG executive trainings for companies, and publishes research and cases on ESG investing. She holds various board-level advisory positions. She graduated with a PhD in Financial Engineering from SFI, Switzerland, MPhil in International Economics from HEI, Geneva, Switzerland, and Certificate of Finance from Oxford University.

Jean-Marc Champagne

Jean-Marc is the Head of Environmental Finance & Bankable Nature Solutions Asia WWF-Hong Kong. His main focus is heading up WWF's newly launched Bankable Nature Solutions initiative for Asia, which aims to originate and develop scalable bankable projects with conservation impact. He is also managing the Asia-Pacific portion of the origination facility for the €160 million Dutch Fund for Climate and Development.

He was instrumental in launching the Climate Impact Asia Fund in January 2020 and is a member of its Investment Advisory Committee. He also advises institutional investors, lenders, and underwriters on the financial and economic risks and opportunities related to climate change and environmental issues. Prior to WWF, he spent 17 years in the financial industry advising institutional investors on equities and equity derivatives. He graduated from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York.

Mark Chan

Mark is a Partner of Clifford Chance (Hong Kong) in the Global Financial Markets Group. Mark specialises in a wide range of debt and equity-linked capital markets products. He advises both issuers and underwriters on standalone debt issuances, medium term note, certificate of deposits and commercial paper programmes, convertible and exchangeable bonds, corporate hybrid capital and regulatory (bank and insurance) capital products, ESG-related issuances, liability management exercises as well as bespoke private capital markets financings. He is focused on the transition to security tokens and digital debt capital markets products.

Pratima Divgi

Pratima Divgi is leading CDP's regional efforts in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand since 2019. In her role as Director, she engages with corporates, capital markets, policy and subnational governments in their efforts to measure and manage climate and environmental impact.

In her previous career, Pratima spent 17 years in finance, most recently in private equity with Aberdeen Standard Investments. Besides her investment role at Aberdeen Standard, she was also part of the private equity environmental, social and governance (ESG) working group which involved formulation of the ESG policy and leading the policy implementation for Asia-Pacific private equity investments.

Pratima remains an active member of the Hong Kong Venture Capital Association (HKVCA) and represents CDP on the Private Equity as well as ESG Disclosure and Integration working groups at the Hong Kong Green Finance Association (HKGFA).

Ben El-Baz

Ben is Head of Ecosystems at HashKey Group, a regulated digital assets company. At HashKey, he has led the Group's strategic partnerships and corporate investments in asset tokenisation and blockchain applications. Ben also leads HashKey's trade finance blockchain partnerships with the Singapore Government and Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

With over 13 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Mainland China, and Hong Kong, he started his career as a derivatives trader, then as a China cross-borders corporate finance analyst, before moving into technology product management and business development, serving Big Tech clients like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Ben speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese fluently. Ben is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he earned his Master's degree in Management, led Stanford's largest blockchain applications working group, and co-authored Stanford's first published research on blockchain applications for ESG and social impact.

Connie Heng

Connie Heng is Clifford Chance's Regional Managing Partner for Asia Pacific. During her 20-plus year career, she has assisted many Hong Kong and Chinese issuers with their securities offerings in the international debt capital markets and has advised on many landmark transactions. Connie is a member of the Firm's Global Executive Leadership Group and has represented the firm as part of its delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos since 2012. Connie is an active supporter of diversity and gender issues and founded the region's first women's network. She also sits on the board of the Karen Leung Foundation, a charity which is focused on the prevention of gynaecological cancers in Hong Kong.

Corrinne Ho

Corrinne is an Adviser for green finance and climate change related risks at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). She assumed her current role in July 2020. Before that, she had served in different capacities within the BIS, including in the Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific (2003–2007), in the secretariat of the Committee on the Global Financial System (2008–2013), as Secretary to the Markets Committee (2009–2013), as Adviser to the General Manager (2013–2018) and as Head of Strategy Implementation (2019–2020). Prior to joining the BIS in 2000 as an economist, she was at Princeton University, teaching for the Economics Department and the School of Public and International Affairs while completing her doctoral degree in economics.

Grace Hui

Grace is the Head of Green and Sustainable Finance at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) with responsibility for the development of HKEX's green and sustainable finance program. From 2013 to April 2020, she was the Chief Operating Officer of HKEX's Listing Division responsible for structured products & fixed income, primary market information, listing policies, listing enforcement and accounting affairs. Prior to joining HKEX, she was with UBS in various roles including Chief of Staff and Global COO. She is an Honorary Adviser and a member of the Inspection Committee of the Financial Reporting Council; a member of both the Regulatory Oversight Board and the Sustainability Committee of The Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants; and co-chairs the Market Development Work Stream and the Carbon Market Working Group of the Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agencies Steering Group established by Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Securities and Futures Commission.

Laurence Kehoe

Lory is a global director and senior digital assets and blockchain lead within BNY Mellon's Digital Assets Unit. Lory works across the BNY Mellon enterprise to lead client engagement on digital assets and blockchain.

Lory has over seven years blockchain and digital asset experience and has joined from blockchain technology company ConsenSys, where he was an EMEA managing director, MD of ConsenSys Ireland, part of the global leadership team and co-global head of partnerships. Prior to ConsenSys, Lory was a partner with Deloitte China and a director with Deloitte Ireland.

Lory is the founder of State-backed, Blockchain Ireland, a qualified financial adviser, registered stockbroker with the Irish stock exchange, a fourteen year adjunct professor with Trinity College Dublin, is currently undertaking a PhD in innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem development, and holds a degree in psychology from University College Dublin, as well as graduate degrees from University College Dublin and Technological University Dublin.

Katherine Foster

Katherine is a lead consultant on the UN Task Force Dialogue on BigFintechs and Sustainable Development, the Community Director of the Open Earth Foundation (USA) and the Social Alpha Foundation Fellow. A former diplomat specializing in human security and climate-change, Katherine has been spearheading innovation at the nexus of technology, policy, finance, climate and sustainable development for 30 years. She has held leadership roles at Climate-KIC (Europe's flagship climate innovation initiative) and the Green Digital Finance Alliance, including as Sherpa to the UN Task Force on Digital Finance for the SDGs. Katherine has contributed to key research, reports and technical platforms including the World Bank's Carbon Market Blockchain Pilot and the Swiss Capacity Building Facility. She serves as an advisor to accelerators and startups (becoming an MIT Solve Fellow in 2018) and as a facilitator and speaker on strategic collaboration, systems innovation and impact entrepreneurship. Katherine is Swiss and Canadian-Métis.

Ivy Lau

Ivy is General Manager East Asia, Client Services, Climate Bonds Initiative. She leads business development and stakeholder engagement in East Asia at the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), an international and investor-focused not-for-profit that works solely on mobilising the $100 trillion bond market for climate change solutions. Based in Hong Kong, she manages business opportunities in Greater China, Japan and South Korea, and forges strategic partnerships with key stakeholders in green and sustainable finance, including government authorities, regulators, financial institutions, investors and corporates. She also dedicates herself to green finance policy advisory work and capacity building programme that help accelerate the low carbon economic transition in the region.

Christine Loh

Christine is the chief development strategist, Institute for the Environment, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Prior to her present role, she was the undersecretary for the environment in the HKSAR government (2012-17). She also teaches a course at the Anderson School of Management, UCLA, on nonmarket risks. Professor Loh is a lawyer by training and a commodities trader by profession. She served as a legislator for almost a decade, and was also the founder-CEO of a policy think tank. She currently serves on numerous for profit and non-profit boards in Hong Kong and overseas.

Urszula McCormack

Urszula is a partner for Cross-Border Finance and Technology at King & Wood Mallesons. She is one of Asia's leading regulatory and digital economy lawyers, with a focus on emerging technologies. Urszula advises global banks, payment institutions, large technology companies, exchanges, virtual asset issuers and software developers on new products, cross-border transactions, compliance and licensing. In her data practice, Urszula advises on privacy regulation, algorithmic design, encryption technologies and data-sharing arrangements. Urszula is a leading specialist advising governments, multilaterals and regulators on building robust enabling environments for digital payments, digital identity, financial crime controls, cross-border data flows and innovation. Urszula is a member of multiple advisory bodies and has been appointed to the Panel of Recognised International Market Experts (P.R.I.M.E.). Urszula is admitted to practice law in Hong Kong, Australia and England & Wales and is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).

Ben McQuhae

Ben is the founder of Ben McQuhae & Co, a commercial law firm committed to sustainability and innovation – we only take on mandates that are aligned with the UN SDGs – that has been described as perhaps "the first ESG dedicated law firm on the planet". An active leader in sustainability and sustainable finance, including as a founder of the Hong Kong Green Finance Association and the Hong Kong representative on the UN Financial Centres for Sustainability network.

Ben has various additional leadership positions, including Co-Founder, Executive Committee Member and Special Advisor to the Chairman, Hong Kong Green Finance Association; Hong Kong representative, United Nations network of international Financial Centres for Sustainability; Project Coordinator, The Greater Bay Area Green Finance Alliance; Member, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific's Sustainable Business Network; founder of various businesses and associations. Ben also holds various board positions.

Rocky Mui

Rocky is a Partner of Clifford Chance (Hong Kong) funds and investment management team. He specialises in fund establishment, authorisation of funds, licensing and regulatory advice, PRC investment programs (QFI/Stock Connect/Bond Connect/CIBM Direct Access), cross-border mergers & acquisitions and general corporate related work.

Rocky is a senior member of Clifford Chance's global Tech group and strategy committee and he co-leads the Tech and Fintech practice in Hong Kong. In particular he has developed expertise in blockchain and cryptocurrencies related matters. He is also a member of the ASFIMA Fintech Working Group, Blockchain Committee of Fintech Association of Hong Kong and Fintech Committee of the Private Wealth Management Association. He is admitted in Hong Kong, New South Wales Australia, and England and Wales. He was previously an associate member of CPA Australia.

Cindy Ngan

Cindy is a Partner in the Climate and Sustainability Practice of PwC Hong Kong. She has over 20+ years of audit and consulting experience primarily focusing on banking and capital market clients. Cindy also spent 8 years working in the United States servicing multinational organisations and government agencies. Cindy is a Certified Public Accountant in Hong Kong and is also a Chartered Financial Analyst. More recently, she is dedicating the majority of her time to leading ESG research and development and implementation of solutions for clients across the financial services sectors in Hong Kong.

In the past, Cindy led audits of global banking and capital market clients with extensive experience in valuation of private equity investments in ESG projects and accounting of complex deal structure. She also led several regulatory examinations in Hong Kong around controls and governance around trading practices, anti-money laundering activities and consolidated supervision (including bank and insurance business activities).

Frank Packer

Frank is Regional Adviser at the BIS Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific. He currently represents the BIS on the G-20 Sustainable Finance Working Group, and co-chairs the Market Transparency Subgroup of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS). Frank has published regularly on issues related to green finance in both BIS and external publications. Before moving to the BIS Asian Office, Frank was head of Financial Markets in the BIS's Monetary and Economic Department, and editor of the BIS Quarterly Review. Prior to assuming the current position, he was line manager in the Asian Office for six years, most recently as Head of Economics and Financial Markets. Earlier in his career, he worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Nikko Citigroup in Tokyo. He received his PhD from Columbia University, an MBA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Harvard.

Shi Piao

Ms Shi Piao is the Director and Head of International Research & Partnerships at Ant Group, where she works in close collaboration with international organizations, research institutions, and business partners to support strategic projects and research. Ms Piao holds a PhD in Macroeconomics and has a deep understanding and experience in the areas of fintech, inclusive finance, and green finance. Before joining Ant Group in 2016, Ms Piao worked at the International Monetary Fund's headquarter in Washington, DC.

Dave Sandor

A background in capital markets and financial structuring, Dave has been involved in the financial markets since 2004, most recently at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Dave set up Allinfra with the founding team in 2018 to solve issues existing in real asset investment, climate products and related data. The team developed Allinfra Climate, a blockchain-based environmental platform that helps corporates and institutions achieve verifiable climate and sustainability goals, and Allinfra Digital, an asset tokenisation platform.

Massamba Thioye

Massamba is Manager in the mitigation Program of the UNFCCC secretariat where he is leading the development of regulations pertaining to the measurement of the impacts of climate action, including climate action undertaken by financiers.

Most of his work currently focuses on the interface of climate/sustainability, finance and digital. This includes the application of digital technologies such as IoT, Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and AI to climate and sustainability actions. He is co-Chair of the Climate Chain Coalition, a coalition of more than 200 organizations working on the application of DLT to climate and sustainability action. He is also a member of the Government Advisory Board of INATBA, a global blockchain association supported by the European commission. Massamba co-convened the development of the ISO standard, ISO 14097 "Framework and principles for assessing and reporting investments and financing activities related to climate change".

Massamba has a PhD on energy systems.

Laurence Van der Loo

Laurence is Executive Director, Technology and Operations at ASIFMA, the Asia Securities Industry & Financial Markets Association. Based in Singapore, Laurence is responsible for coordinating ASIFMA's regional Operations and Technology advocacy efforts including regulatory implementation, cost efficiencies, KYC/AML, fintech/regtech and cyber and cloud. In addition, she oversees several of ASIFMA's regional committees in India. Laurence also supports the CEO team with ASIFMA's corporate governance and board processes. Laurence has 14 years of experience in the financial services industry. Laurence holds a Master Degree in Business Economics from the University of Ghent, and a Master Degree in International Business from EAE Business School. She is fluent in English, Dutch and French.

Martin Wainstein

Martin is the founder of the Open Earth Foundation, a research and deployment non-profit focusing on digital innovations and open collaborations around planetary-scale projects such as Open Climate. He is a resident fellow at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, where he founded and leads the research efforts behind the Yale Open Innovation Lab. Martin held appointments at the Yale Department of Electrical Engineering, the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale, and is a research affiliate at the Digital Currency Initiative of the MIT Media Lab. He is the co-founding chair of the Hyperledger Climate Action and Accounting SIG at the Linux Foundation, and actively advises deep tech startups such as the Spatial Web, Verses, and Raise Green.

Johnny Wijaya

Johnny is the Head of BNY Mellon APAC Innovation Center. The BNY Mellon Innovation Center Network is an integral pillar of the organization's digital transformation initiative. Johnny works across the enterprise to drive rapid execution of ideas and concepts in collaboration with clients, fintechs, big techs and internal teams, while creating an environment that accelerates and promotes experimentation and incubation of new products and services. He has over 18 years of international experience in digital transformation within financial services, consulting, telecommunications industry as well as the public sector, delivering digital transformation through the adoption of new technologies, capabilities that have resulted in revenue growth, operational efficiency, and risk reduction. Within his tenure at BNY Mellon, he has held multiple senior roles in Digital and Technology delivering services in APAC, Latin America and North America.

Nancy Yaling Wu

Ms Wu is Senior Advisor of Ant Group Research Institute. She is responsible for the green finance policy research and green business innovation incubation at Ant Group Research Institute. Before joining Ant Group, Ms. Wu worked at MEPFECO and MOF, participating in the international cooperation projects in the fields of climate change and environmental protection. Ms Wu holds a master's degree in environmental economics.

Representatives from the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Securities and Futures Commission are participating in Project Genesis as observers.

Henri Arslanian

Henri is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Hong Kong where he teaches the first FinTech university course in Asia. He also advises many of the world's leading crypto exchanges, investors, financial institutions and tech firms on their FinTech and crypto initiatives as well numerous governments, regulators and central banks on Fintech and crypto regulatory and policy matters. He holds a Masters in Chinese Law from Tsinghua University; a joint Global Executive MBA from Columbia Business School, London Business School, and Hong Kong University; a Bachelor of Law from the University of Montreal (Dean's List of Excellence) and a Masters in Transnational Law from the University of Sherbrooke, where he was awarded the Governor General of Canada Gold Medal for Academic Excellence for having graduated with the highest grades of the university.

Peter Chan

Peter is based in Hong Kong, and is a Director in the Debt Capital Markets of Standard Chartered with expertise in international and domestic bond issuance for Hong Kong issuers. Peter has extensive experience in structuring and executing debt capital markets for Hong Kong public sector issuers. He had worked closely with HKMA, and participated in a number of landmark transactions for the HKSAR Government, including the debut retail iBond issuance in 2011 all the Sukuk issuance from 2014-2017 and the recent green bond issuance in 2021. Peter graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Science in Quantitative Finance with first class honor Prior to joining Standard Chartered in November 2013 Peter worked in HSBC Hong Kong Debt Capital Markets.

Ka Fai Choi

Ka Fai is the Chief Risk Officer of Ping An OneConnect Bank (PAOB). He has been in the risk management profession throughout his career, with extensive experience in analytics, portfolio management, risk policies and regulatory liaison. Prior to joining POAB, he was Assistant General Manager in OCBC Wing Hang, in charge of all credit risk models, and was the Chief Operating Officer of Credit and Head of Group Portfolio Analytics in DBS Hong Kong. Ka Fai began his career with HKMA and subsequently Moody's Analytics.

Ben El-Baz

Ben is Head of Ecosystems at HashKey Group, a regulated digital assets company. At HashKey, he has led the Group's strategic partnerships and corporate investments in asset tokenisation and blockchain applications. Ben also leads HashKey's trade finance blockchain partnerships with the Singapore Government and Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

With over 13 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Mainland China, and Hong Kong, he started his career as a derivatives trader, then as a China cross-borders corporate finance analyst, before moving into technology product management and business development, serving Big Tech clients like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Ben speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese fluently. Ben is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he earned his Master's degree in Management, led Stanford's largest blockchain applications working group, and co-authored Stanford's first published research on blockchain applications for ESG and social impact.

Aaron Gwak

Aaron is based in Singapore as Managing Director and Head of Capital Markets, ASEAN at Standard Chartered Bank. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing origination, structuring and execution of both foreign and local currency bonds in the ASEAN region. Committed to the digitization of Capital Markets, Aaron launched an SC Ventures funded intrapreneur venture, Liberty, aimed at boosting financial inclusion by bringing the safest assets available in any country – government bonds – to the masses, by leveraging distributed ledger technology. Aaron began his banking career at UBS Investment Bank in Seoul and subsequently in Singapore. As a member of the Global Capital Markets team, he helped originate and execute over 45 asset-backed and corporate bond transactions across Asia during his tenure with UBS. Raised in Ghana, Aaron holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Seoul National University.

Edwin Hui

Edwin heads Strategy, Partnerships and Corporate Affairs at Mox and currently additionally serves as the Interim Chief Customer Officer. Edwin sits on the bank's Executive Committee. He is passionate about driving the growth of the banking industry in Asia and believes that virtual banks will be a game changer in Hong Kong.

Grace Hui

Grace is the Head of Green and Sustainable Finance at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) with responsibility for the development of HKEX's green and sustainable finance program. From 2013 to April 2020, she was the Chief Operating Officer of HKEX's Listing Division responsible for structured products & fixed income, primary market information, listing policies, listing enforcement and accounting affairs. Prior to joining HKEX, she was with UBS in various roles including Chief of Staff and Global COO. She is an Honorary Adviser and a member of the Inspection Committee of the Financial Reporting Council; a member of both the Regulatory Oversight Board and the Sustainability Committee of The Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants; and co-chairs the Market Development Work Stream and the Carbon Market Working Group of the Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agencies Steering Group established by Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Securities and Futures Commission.

Julien Martin

Julien is the Managing Director and Head of Emerging Business Development of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX), and the General Manager of Bond Connect Company Limited, a joint venture established by HKEX and China Foreign Exchange Trade System. He joined HKEX in 2015. He spearheads the digital, data and ESG business at HKEX, overseeing initiatives that expand its reach in the digital space and consolidate its role as an ESG and data hub. Prior to joining HKEX, Mr Martin was Head of RMB Competence Centre, Managing Director and Deputy Head of Fixed Income China at BNP Paribas. He has over 18 years of banking and finance experience, with over 12 years spent between Shanghai and Hong Kong. Mr Martin is a recognised expert in Asian financial markets, fixed income and foreign exchange. He is fluent in English, French and Mandarin. Mr Martin holds an MBA degree from ESSEC Business School, Paris.

Urszula McCormack

Urszula is a partner for Cross-Border Finance and Technology at King & Wood Mallesons. She is one of Asia's leading regulatory and digital economy lawyers, with a focus on emerging technologies. Urszula advises global banks, payment institutions, large technology companies, exchanges, virtual asset issuers and software developers on new products, cross-border transactions, compliance and licensing. In her data practice, Urszula advises on privacy regulation, algorithmic design, encryption technologies and data-sharing arrangements. Urszula is a leading specialist advising governments, multilaterals and regulators on building robust enabling environments for digital payments, digital identity, financial crime controls, cross-border data flows and innovation. Urszula is a member of multiple advisory bodies and has been appointed to the Panel of Recognised International Market Experts (P.R.I.M.E.). Urszula is admitted to practice law in Hong Kong, Australia and England & Wales and is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).

Dave Sandor

A background in capital markets and financial structuring, Dave has been involved in the financial markets since 2004, most recently at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Dave set up Allinfra with the founding team in 2018 to solve issues existing in real asset investment, climate products and related data. The team developed Allinfra Climate, a blockchain-based environmental platform that helps corporates and institutions achieve verifiable climate and sustainability goals, and Allinfra Digital, an asset tokenization platform.