From 2010 to his retirement at the start of 2021, Charles Li, the chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, the company that operates the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, was in charge during an eventful period for the exchange. He expanded its business from mainland China, allowing mainland Chinese investors to trade Hong Kong stocks and overseas investors to trade mainland Chinese stocks, and oversaw the acquisition of the London Metal Exchange in 2012, as well as one of the most far-reaching revisions of HKEX’s listing rules ever. Li began his career as a lawyer in New York in the early 1990s, transferring to the finance industry with Merrill Lynch in 1994 and becoming the investment bank’s China president in 1999. He then became chairman of JP Morgan Chase China in 2003.

Since retiring from the stock exchange, he has founded and become chairman of Micro Connect, an investment platform that allows global access to small businesses in China and has also become a director of bond trading platform MarketAxess. A member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, he is also adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School.

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