Session One: Tackling climate change

In one way or another, Climate change will affect every country, every organisation and every individual on our planet. In this session, we will examine how our understanding of the responsibilities of the company must be transformed to include an effective response to the threat of irreversible climate change, how governance is essential to delivering, measuring and communicating that response and how governance professionals must be rethinking their own roles as key contributors to tackling climate change.

Session Two: Harnessing technology

In the history of mankind, technological advances have never been so rapid, far-reaching or wide-ranging. Amongst those advances have been extraordinary changes in the speed and volume of information flows, the capacity of technology to supplement, even replace, human thought and the extent of the knowledge and data about each of us which is created and released each day. In this session, we will look at cybersecurity, the protection of privacy and the use of artificial intelligence - three aspects of the digital revolution where governance practices must be rethought to ensure that technology is harnessed to deliver both its potential benefits and to manage its accompanying risks.

Session Three: Welcoming diversity and inclusion

Each of us is unique in our own way. Each of us has particular strengths and weaknesses, but each of us deserves equality of treatment and opportunity. This is not just a basic issue of fairness, but also a means of ensuring that every organisation maximises the potential of all its stakeholders, internal and external, to support its sustained success. As such, welcoming diversity and promoting inclusion is a fundamental component of good governance. In this session, we will consider how the scope of governance, and the work of governance professionals, must be revisited to ensure that all those within an organisation from the board, through management to every colleague, and all those impacted or influenced by the organisation’s business and activities are respected and treated fairly.

Session Four: Enhancing Hong Kong’s competitive advantage

Over the past seventy years, Hong Kong has transformed and repositioned itself in response to changing times: from a trading port to a manufacturing base and international financial centre. In today’s globalised economy the competition for investment, capital raising and fund management is international. Investors have a wide choice as to where they will place their money. At the same time, structures such as private equity are vying with the listed company as preferred investment vehicles. Hong Kong’s continuing success as a financial hub, in China, in the Asia-Pacific region and globally, means that our competitive edge must constantly be sharpened. This session will analyse how the role of governance, and of governance professionals, can evolve to enhance Hong Kong’s ability to link capital providers with investment opportunities and to provide them with the choices of investment vehicles which they expect.

Corporate Governance in Conversation: Repurposing company reporting