Andrew Sheng
Capital, trade, and regulation no longer move in the same direction. Boards are making decade-long commitments in Asia while the rules governing cross-border finance, Chinese policy, and US oversight shift underneath them. The question is no longer how to forecast the next cycle. It is how to build a strategy that survives competing financial systems.
Andrew Sheng is a former central banker and securities regulator who helps boards and institutions read the fault lines between Asian finance, Chinese policy, and the global economic order.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Andrew Sheng
- He has sat inside the institutions most leaders only read about. Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, World Bank, and as Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission. He speaks from the regulator’s chair, not the commentator’s.
- His book From Asian to Global Financial Crisis (Cambridge University Press) is the standard insider account of how the 1997 Asian crisis and the 2008 global crisis share common causes. Boards use his framing to stress-test their own assumptions about financial stability.
- He is one of a very small group of Western-trained economists with direct, ongoing advisory access to Chinese financial policymakers. For organisations exposed to China, that is a perspective almost impossible to replicate.
- TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013 for helping leaders understand the rebalancing of the global economy. His Project Syndicate and South China Morning Post columns remain a reference point for finance ministers and institutional investors.
- He translates technical finance into strategic language. Boards come away with a clearer view of what Chinese shadow banking, sustainable finance, and US-China capital tensions mean for their own capital allocation.
Biography highlights
- Chairman, Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, 1998 to 2005
- Deputy Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority
- Chief Adviser, China Banking Regulatory Commission (later China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission)
- Distinguished Fellow, Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong
- Author, From Asian to Global Financial Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2009); co-editor, Shadow Banking in China (Wiley, 2016)
- Named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People, 2013
- Featured interviewee in the Academy Award-winning documentary Inside Job (2010)
- Pro-Chancellor, University of Bristol; columnist, Project Syndicate and South China Morning Post
Biography
The 1997 Asian financial crisis and the 2008 global crisis were not separate events. They shared the same causes: loose money, lax supervision, market fundamentalism, and an appetite for financial engineering that outran the regulators watching it. Andrew Sheng made that argument from inside the system, as a regulator who had watched both crises unfold from Asian capitals and Washington.
His career is the reason the argument carries weight. He chaired the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission from 1998 to 2005, served as Deputy Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, spent four years at the World Bank, and began his career at Bank Negara Malaysia. Since 2013 he has been Chief Adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, giving him an active seat inside the policy apparatus shaping the world’s second-largest financial system.
That access sits alongside a serious body of written work. From Asian to Global Financial Crisis, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, remains a standard insider account of how unfettered finance produced two systemic shocks in a decade. Shadow Banking in China, co-edited for Wiley in 2016, is one of the few book-length treatments of Chinese off-balance-sheet finance written by authors with direct regulatory knowledge. His Project Syndicate column, running since 2011, is read by finance ministers and institutional investors.
For boards exposed to Asia, the value is specific. Sheng does not describe China from the outside or financial regulation in the abstract. He explains how Beijing’s policymakers think about capital, what Western assumptions about Chinese finance tend to miss, and where the global monetary order is most likely to fracture next. TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013 for doing exactly this work.
Key speaking topics
- Global financial stability and systemic risk
- China’s financial system and policy direction
- US-China economic and financial decoupling
- Asian capital markets and cross-border flows
- Central banking and financial regulation
- Sustainable finance and green capital
- The future of the international monetary order
Ideal for
- Boards and investment committees with material exposure to Asian markets
- Central banks, financial regulators, and ministries of finance
- CIOs, CFOs, and treasurers at global financial institutions
- Policy, strategy, and sovereign wealth audiences evaluating China and the multilateral order
Audience outcomes
- A regulator’s read on where the next systemic shock is most likely to originate
- A more accurate mental model of how Chinese financial policy is made and what it prioritises
- Sharper questions to ask about counterparty, currency, and capital-flow risk in Asia
- A structured way to think about sustainable finance beyond disclosure and taxonomy debates
- Language for the board on what decoupling, sanctions, and capital-market fragmentation mean for strategy