Asia’s top CEOs from different industries share insights on post-pandemic recovery and China issues
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HONG KONG, Nov. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — The first-ever virtual "All Markets Summit Asia: The Path Forward" hosted by Yahoo Finance successfully concluded its inaugural outing in Hong Kong with a viewership of over 3,000,000 viewers across the world. The region’s top CEOs from many different industries shared impactful insights, especially on recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as China issues, through interviews, panel discussions, and the fruitful sharing of best practices.
This international summit, in its first-ever Asia Edition format, brought together standout speakers including Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup, Patrick Gelsinger, CEO, Intel Corporation, and Daniel Tsai Ming-Chung, Chairman, Fubon Group, Allan Zeman, Chairman, Lan Kwai Fong Group, Bernard Charnwut Chan, President, Asia Financial Holdings Ltd., Christian Hogg, Executive Director & CEO, HUTCHMED, Simon Loong Pui-chi, Founder & Group CEO, WeLab, and Michael Chan Kwan-yu, Co-Founder, Co-CEO & Director, Bowtie Life Insurance.
Mr. Rico Chan, Head of APAC Sales, Yahoo, said, "As the first-ever virtual All Markets Summit Asia: The Path Forward, we are truly appreciative for the insightful sharing of best practices by some of our region’s standout business leaders, helping our audiences to make headway and capture successes on the road out of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as perspectives on China-related issues."
The Road Ahead: Building Opportunities on the path to Post-pandemic Recovery
Under the theme of "The Path Forward", the summit revealed some fascinating insights on post-pandemic-era learning in which the long-established property leaders have taken advantage of the recovery period to make hay.
- Thinking like a customer is the key to success
"I’m embarrassed to tell people, but as a landlord, I’m a hundred percent leased. Even during the good times, I’m normally about 93-94 percent leased, never a hundred percent leased," revealed Allan Zeman, Chairman of Lan Kwai Fong Group. "During the pandemic, people and businesses actually invented new ways of surviving, such as the hotels coming up with staycations, while cruise operators offered a ‘trip to nowhere’. Good marketing ploys combined with always thinking like a customer rather than a boss means aligning yourself with the customer’s perspective to be successful."
Video: https://bit.ly/31jtv9s - Public are accustomed to change, so scaling up is easier than ever
Bernard Charnwut Chan, President of Asia Financial Holdings Ltd., shared the insight that people are now accustomed to change, so things tend to scale up more easily. "If your business model works, I think you can scale up so much faster and can synergize with all the different applications as well. The way forward now is not just about your platform, but how your platform can work with others, collaborating with other players and working together," he said.
Video: https://bit.ly/3Cuexem - Millennials prefer to get what they need via digitalized services, and do it right first time
While Simon Loong Pui-chi, Founder & Group CEO, WeLab, also shared that "Loan applications in HK dropped by 5-10%YoY before and after the pandemic, but WeLab as a virtual bank grew 45%." Simon explained, "Millennials represent the next engine of domestic consumption growth; digitalized services brought by mobile apps or mobile experiences are favorable to millennials as they prefer to figure out everything by themselves and do things right the first time."
Video: https://bit.ly/3w77VjU - People are now placing their health and wellbeing above anything else
The COVID-19 pandemic has not only impacted businesses but also changed public interests dramatically, in so much as that people are now placing their health and wellbeing above things that previously mattered more to them. This is proven by the massive growth in health-oriented content online post-pandemic. "Online, the focus on health awareness, and the search for health information generally, has just exploded. So, imagine a huge swell in health awareness and health content consumption, which hopefully will lead to better health outcomes for people as a result," said Michael Chan Kwan-yu, Co-Founder, Co-CEO & Director of Bowtie Life Insurance. "Now that everyone is so focused on health, we’re not going to build enough hospitals, but people know about preventative health, and so we must continue establishing a comprehensive medical check-up system."
Video: https://bit.ly/3ECckhs - Always look for a tailwind to succeed
Christian Hogg, Executive Director & CEO, HUTCHMED exemplified, "In oncology, cancer is really a unique disease. And it’s a bit like the COVID. It mutates, it changes. And you think you’ve got one disease sorted out and suddenly it turns into something different." The same seems to be true of running businesses, particularly in the post-pandemic era, so getting well prepared has never been so vital for keeping businesses sustained and growing. "Always look for a tailwind, never play in an industry or a business that you’re facing headwinds because ultimately it’ll get you. If you’ve got tailwinds behind you, you’ll succeed. So, you have to have some vision."
Video: https://bit.ly/3CAeZrs
China at the Forefront: Leadership, Innovation and Inclusivity
Apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of China has also been under the spotlight in recent years.
- Hong Kong may start really cracking down on the so-called free market
Allan Zeman explained, "Beijing definitely has a different culture than the Western world. There’s something called Common Prosperity, which Beijing feels fundamentally within their system. China is all about understanding the culture of shared wealth opportunity, and it’s about stability. It’s about keeping a stable market, keeping socialism with Chinese characteristics. At the end of the day, it makes opportunity more equal. Hong Kong, being part of China, may start really cracking down on the so-called free market because not everybody can benefit from it."
Video: https://bit.ly/31jtv9s - China is looking to be the source of global innovation in many sectors
Bernard Charnwut Chan also shared, "Under the 14-5 years’ plan, the central government is endorsing Hong Kong’s role going forward. In addition to IFC, we are also the international aviation hub, international trade hub, and very excitingly the innovation and technology hub. Technology is still the way to go. What happened in Mainland China, it’s more about making sure there is no one player being too dominant." Christian Hogg added, "The Chinese government in general is looking to move China to be an innovative biopharmaceutical industry and a source of global innovation. They don’t want to go down the path of creating a generic industry that is competing with India or competing with many other countries around the world. They want to be innovators."
Unlocking Growth by Tapping into the era of Digitalization
The summit also featured a panel discussion focusing on tapping into the era of digitalization, which explained how digitalized solutions unlock business growth and opportunities. During the discussion, panelists Magnus Ekbom, CSO, Lazada Group, and Vincent Fan, Co-founder & CSO, Zeek, discussed the market opportunity within trending industries brought about by adaptation to a ‘new normal’.
Video: https://bit.ly/3bqmiGt
- Digital transformation of the whole retail ecosystem will be the trend
Magnus said, "The keyword is not e-commerce, offline, online, etc. as these terms are going to disappear. It’s going to be more a digital transformation of the whole retail ecosystem, where technology is used as a transformative catalyst to really drive new ways of leveraging data; how we can enhance the end-to-end user experience and what the customers can get out of participating in the retail economy." - COVID sped up e-Commerce even more rapidly, so efficiency is the key
Vincent Fan, Co-founder & CSO, Zeek, also commented as one of the market leaders in the instant delivery industry, "Although e-commerce has been growing quite fast in the past few years, COVID actually sped it up even further. People would be expecting their sales orders to be delivered within a few days in the past, while in quick-commerce things are happening within hours or even within one hour nowadays, where robots and drones sometimes help to improve the efficiency of our couriers, saving them the time of waiting for lifts."
Panelists Alvin Wang Graylin, President, HTC China, and Steve Zhao, Founder & CEO, Sandbox VR, talked about the rapid growth and prospects of the gaming market with VR & digital experience in Asia:
Video: https://bit.ly/2ZF1mso
- The Metaverse is the next incarnation of the Internet
"There’s going to be one Metaverse made of many, many virtual worlds. I think that’s really important to understand," Alvin Wang Graylin, China President of HTC explained. "Just like there’s only one internet infrastructure today, there’s going to be one Metaverse, and nobody owns it, and everybody can use it. A true metaverse will happen when we can go into these different places with a single account, with a single avatar that we can use to go across all of these apps – freedom to do all of these things without being locked into a solitary monopolistic ecosystem. It’s going to take time to develop, so it’s not here yet." - NFT is the key to one’s ownership in the virtual world
Video: https://bit.ly/3pVoOwA
With the future development of a metaverse, a critical issue is how to protect one’s digital assets. Alvin claimed, "NFTs will continue to evolve, and in the future, be essentially an invisible token or some other mechanism that helps us go across all these virtual environments and still maintain that consistent sense of ownership.""For us, we’re space agnostic, we’re device agnostic, we can utilize different devices where you can actually feel the 4D effect of these ownerships that you have," added Steve Zhao, Founder & CEO, Sandbox VR. "Imagine what it would be like when you can actually wear your NFT and be able to feel it, and for everyone else physically to feel the presence of your persona, that’s what we want to look into."
On NFTs as a business opportunity, panelist Hanjin Tan, music legend and Co-Founder of Naffiti, discussed the digital transformation in the music industry and the NFT market: "The applications of an NFT are endless, and we are only just beginning to touch the surface. Most people view NFTs as unique tokens living on the blockchain, capable of representing unique assets. The most obvious case is for digital assets, so digital art, digital music, digital anything. NFTs are capable of revolutionizing dozens of digital native industries. I see it as an opportunity to raise the income floor in less-than equitable digital industries."
Mr. Rico Chan, VP & Head of APAC Sales, Yahoo summarized thusly: "As the first-ever Asia Edition format of this international summit, not only did we record a global viewership of over 3,000,000 across different platforms, we have also received positive feedback from different industries. We, Yahoo Finance, as a leading digital financial platform, wish to extend the success of the Asia Edition format of All Markets Summit to be an annual event, bringing together continuously a symposium of leading experts and business leaders which helps to further drive economic growth, to attract investment, and to boost prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region."