Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
HK Exchange’s Arculli plays it cool
Spilling a piping cup of hot coffee down yourself in front of a room of journalists seconds before they start firing questions at you isn’t in your standard media training handbook.
But 72-year-old Hong Kong Exchange Chairman Ronald Arculli, isn’t a man who gets easily ruffled. While the Reuters reporters went off in a frenzy bringing in tissues and mopping down the table, he just sat there keeping his cool,having not got a drop on his crisp white shirt or tie.
Aside from his role at Hong Kong Exchange, Arculli is a senior partner at law firm King & Wood, and his legal training shines through in interviews.
Asked what the exchange’s biggest weakness was – he thought for a while and then replied “I think in some ways our strength may be our weakness”.
Talking about the threat posed to Asian exchanges by the alternative trading venues starting to emerge in the region he went into a highly detailed analysis of how they’ve developed in Europe and the U.S, before cutting them down with an erudite, “but their business model doesn’t seem to propel them to great financial success”.
A “cash cow”
By Don Durfee
Safe havens have been few and far between during the global economic crisis, but one has been fairly reliable: infrastructure. So it’s not surprising that many companies are betting on the biggest infrastructure opportunity of them all, China’s $585 billion spending package.
One of those is NWS Holdings, a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s New World Development. Speaking at the Reuters China Investment Summit, executive director Tsang Yam Pui spoke glowingly about the company’s investment in a project to develop 18 rail container terminals around the country. 
Exotic trades? No way!
By Jeffrey Hodgson
Increasingly risk-averse hedge fund managers are in no mood to chase exotic trades as they scramble to boost returns.
Given the current environment, Robert Appleby, chief investment officer at ADM Capital, told the Reuters Global Finance Summit there was no need to seek out exotic trades or markets for healthy returns.
