Asia Risk Awards Announcement

Steve Coats is an instructional leader and presenter who is at his best when teaching, team building, facilitating meetings, and corporate training, in person and online.  Based in Hong Kong, Steve has worked internationally, collaborating with clients to shape, program, and bring events to life.  

Irene brings a wealth of expertise and leads in various areas such as regulatory technology, wealth management, product compliance, family office compliance & regulatory change governance. She is a talented and seasoned executive with over 14 years of extensive compliance experience in financial sectors including private bank, commercial bank and insurance company. Ms Lee has spearheaded compliance efforts in the bank’s digitalization and regtech initiatives. Ms Lee’s primary interests lie in the application of regtech solutions in the Greater Bay Area to build the ecosystem for the digital transformation.

An internationally recognized financial services expert, Soon Kit offers deep and wide experience accumulated over 15 years in the financial services sector. Bringing a global perspective enriched with grounded experience, he is Head Technology & Operations Risk at Ant Group - Anext Bank. He is formerly Enterprise Resilience Officer at BNY Mellon assuring the firm wide business and operational resilience across multiple lines of business.

Prior to this, he was Risk Vice President of Fullerton Fund Management and Wolters Kluwer’s Asia-Pacific Risk Practice Director guiding regional risk and financial practices for its software clients. At OCBC Bank Group, Soon Kit was managing the risk of Global Treasury, Investment Banking, OCBC Securities and Bank of Singapore. He complements his expertise with international advisory experience garnered at financial software firm Misys / Finastra where he led the risk management teams to solve broader subjects of banking risk with financial firms, banks, regulators in Europe and Asia. Prior to this, Soon Kit provided consulting at Moody’s Analytics.

Recognized for his practical expertise by regional banking conferences and professional media, Soon Kit has contributed many live and case interviews to breaking news developments and industry best practice conferences. 

Graduating with honors in Quantitative Finance from the National University of Singapore, he is also a certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist and an Energy Risk Professional.

Jawad is a Compliance and Anti Financial Crime Subject matter expert with a decade of experience in the second and third line of defence advising tier one financial institutions on strengthening internal control environments and remediation exercises.

Steve Coats is an instructional leader and presenter who is at his best when teaching, team building, facilitating meetings, and corporate training, in person and online.  Based in Hong Kong, Steve has worked internationally, collaborating with clients to shape, program, and bring events to life.  

Leo Tay is Managing Director and Head of FX, Rates, and Derivatives Trading in ING Bank NV, based in Singapore. He manages a diverse and inclusive trading team across Asia, and is also responsible for eTrading and digital asset initiatives. In a broader capacity he is the Lead of Sustainability FM Products, championing the integration of ESG principles into financial market offerings. Leo holds an MSc In Financial Mathematics from the Technische Universitat Kaiserslautern, Germany and BS/BA from the Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines.

Mr. Felix Tse is the General Counsel at Pavilion Energy Pte Ltd, a global energy merchant wholly owned by Temasek. Felix also serves as Company Secretary and is a member of the Management Committee.  He leads a team of lawyers and compliance professionals in Singapore and Madrid, Spain. 

In 2020, Felix advised on the first of its kind long-term LNG supply agreements requiring parties to measure GHG emissions for LNG cargoes from well-head to discharge port.

Prior to joining Pavilion Energy, Felix began his career in Sydney, Australia as a tipstaff to Justice David Kirby in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, before training with Mallesons Stephen Jaques. He then moved to London, firstly with Clifford Chance and subsequently, in-house with Gazprom M&T. He spent almost a decade with Gazprom (in London and Singapore) where he developed expertise for emissions trading and carbon offset projects.

John Feeney manages Martialis Consulting working on financial markets product and infrastructure. He has been in financial markets for 30 years in trading and management roles across most asset classes. Feeney has worked for National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank, Citibank and Macquarie Bank, trading and managing interest rate derivates, foreign exchange, credit, commodities and funding businesses. Most recently, he has focused on Libor and other interbank offered rate transition issues as well as the broader practice areas of Martialis Consulting.

Mike has over 25 years of experience in financial markets across structuring, trading, portfolio management and risk management in Asia and Europe.

He is currently a Senior Investment Officer with the Investment Office at Singlife with Aviva in Singapore. His responsibilities cover investments, derivatives, and structuring.

Previously he was a Derivative Specialist with AIA’s Derivatives Centre of Excellence, expanding their derivatives capabilities.

Before this, he was a member of RBS’ Capital Resolution team, managing the close-out and wind-down of non-core OTC derivative and fixed income portfolios in Asia.

Mike has also held senior roles in the United Kingdom at Audley Capital Advisors, Bluecrest Capital, RBS and WestLB.

Mike has an MBA and a Master of Applied Finance from Macquarie University and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Otago.

Sam Edwards is Head of Collateral Management for Asia Pacific at State Street. Based in Hong Kong, Edwards has two decades of experience in securities finance, and liquidity and financial resource management. Currently he leads the delivery of the Collateral+ solution, enabling clients across Asia Pacific in devising a well-executed collateral strategy. Edwards joined State Street from Credit Suisse, where he established secured financing in APAC and established equity financing capabilities in EMEA, during his 12-year tenure with the firm. His most recent role at Credit Suisse was as head of Asia Pacific Central Collateral Desk. Prior to Credit Suisse, Edwards spent eight years at Lehman Brothers on the Equity & Fixed Income Secured Financing Desk.

Steve Coats is an instructional leader and presenter who is at his best when teaching, team building, facilitating meetings, and corporate training, in person and online.  Based in Hong Kong, Steve has worked internationally, collaborating with clients to shape, program, and bring events to life.  

Manish Singhai is a seasoned investor, having joined the industry in 1993. Since 2003, he has held Asian CIO and CEO roles at global asset managers AllianceBernstein, Aviva Investors, Lazard AM, and Tokio Marine AM.

Manish is an early thought leader in the ESG space, and an active proponent of DEI. At AllianceBernstein as early as in 2000, he pioneered an inhouse Corporate Governance (CG) assessment framework, much before CG and SRI eventually morphed into ESG. In all investment processes he has since designed and led, he has ensured that ESG considerations are central but, in a pragmatic, and not pedantic manner.

Manish has also engaged continuously with corporate managements on ESG issues over more than two decades. In the early 2000s, he worked closely with a Korea University think-tank and other institutional investors to get truly independent directors elected to the boards of leading Korean corporates.

Manish was a member of the Equity Advisory Group, International Institute of Finance, Inc., and a leader/member of their Corporate Governance Task Forces on Indonesia, Malaysia, China and India. He has presented white-papers on ESG-related topics at prestigious forums such as the Fourth OECD roundtable in Asia and the Council of Institutional Investors (cii.org) plenary session in Washington DC. Very recently, Manish has created https://esg-matters.today to post periodic thought pieces on the E, S and G challenges encountered as an investor, and as a repository of ESG resources

Manish holds a B Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, an MBA Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, and is a CFA charterholder.

• In February 2020 Mr. Tamama joined a real estate investment advisory start-up in Tokyo, PROFITZ K.K. as Chief Investment Officer. PROFITZ is an established development and asset management company focused on residential and office assets in Japan with total AUM of approx. US$200 mn.
• Prior to joining PROFITZ in February 2022, Mr. Tamama worked for Abu Dhabi Investment Authority from 2013 to 2022, and managed its real estate portfolio as a senior management in the Asia Pacific team. He primarily covered the Japan, Korea and India markets and managed US$4 bn GAV assets on average during his tenor.
• From 2005 to 2012, Mr. Tamama worked for LaSalle Investment Management and Shinsei Bank. He sourced and made investments for LaSalle Asia Opportunity Fund I & II and acquired US$750 mn GAV assets. He also took fund management role for LaSalle Japan Logistics Fund I & II, and managed US$ 2.5 bn portfolio and led divestment of JLF I portfolio. At Shinsei Bank, Mr. Tamama led sourcing, structuring, pricing, and execution of property backed non-recourse loans. He financed approximately 100 real estate transactions and provided US$8 bn loans over five years.
• Prior to 2005, Mr. Tamama was engaged in investment in non-performing loans (NPLs) at Daiwa SMBC Principal Investments.
• Mr. Tamama received a BA from Keio University (Faculty of Economics) and a MS in Real Estate Development from Columbia University. He finished a general management program (GMP) at Harvard Business School. Mr. Tamama is a member of both the CFA Institute and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Peter Pontikis is a Fintech and Treasury Investment Management professional has close to 40 years’ buy and sell side experience in Australian, Indian & SE Asian financial markets.

With the first three decades focused on investment, corporate dealing, trading and research experience in currencies and global financial markets. Until 2005 he also ran a consultancy advising Asian central banks and fund managers. Aside from several degrees in Finance and Economics, he is a Fellow of CPA Australia and Senior Fellow of FINSIA and has authored several books on foreign exchange and trading in financial markets as well as producing training material on Chinese Financial Markets.

The focus of the most recent decade+ of his ongoing career has been in the private wealth management space including as Investment director (and investor) in a Mid-Cap Indian equity and adviser to several high/Ultra high net worth clients and their family offices.

I am an innovative and creative leader who has changed Treasury, Insurance and Corporate Finance businesses from transactional cost centres to centres of strategic value-add, delivering over $550M in value-add in seven years. I develop and implement strategies for sourcing, structuring and allocating capital that support the Board's corporate strategy, improve financial performance and increase long-term enterprise value.

I have driven successful transformational change by building and leading high performing teams that deliver strong business outcomes. I have built, lead and developed teams of 3-18 professionals.

I held senior and executive positions in financial markets for over 25 years. In addition to leading Corporate Treasury, Corporate Finance and Insurance businesses, I have also been the Head of Derivative Trading at the Bank of Western Australia, a Director in two international FinTech start-ups developing and commercialising option pricing and risk management technology, and the Investment Strategist at GESB fund management.