The Future Of Exchanges: Asia

Irfan Ahmad
Vice President, State Street Digital
State Street Corporation
Irfan Ahmad leads State Street Digital in APAC, State Street’s newest division focused on digital assets and technologies, encompassing the setup of a new integrated business and operating model to support clients’ entire digital investment cycle from pre-trade, trade, and post-trade as well as other initiatives designed to enhance the client experience.

Irfan joined State Street in EMEA in December 2014, where he worked in the company’s Business Architecture function. Since then, he has worked in strategy, regulatory product development and sales in London and Hong Kong. He is now based in Singapore and leads efforts relating to digital assets in the region.

Prior to joining State Street, he worked across Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) technology at Barclays Investment Bank, where he was responsible for their ‘Run the Bank’ project portfolio, service management and business continuity management in EMEA. He later joined the Algorithmic Electronic Trading Technology and Trade Processing Engine team, where he oversaw risk and control practices within EMEA.

Lee Beng Hong
Senior Managing Director & Head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities
SGX
Lee Beng Hong is Head of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) at SGX. He joined SGX on 1 August 2019 to spearhead the newly formed FICC business unit, as part of SGX’s efforts to build scale in multiple asset classes. As Head of FICC, Mr Lee will focus on expanding the range of products, platforms and partnerships for this growing set of asset classes. He will also build upon SGX’s strategic investments in Trumid, a US corporate bond E-trading platform; and Freightos, a digital freight platform and data firm.

Additionally, he oversees the Energy Market Company which operates Singapore’s wholesale electricity market; the Baltic Exchange based in London; BidFX, a specialised trading platform for global FX markets; and Marketnode, a digital asset platform joint venture with Temasek. With over 16 years of experience in global markets, Mr Lee has held various senior roles in Deutsche Bank, specialising in Asian FICC trading, structuring, sales and coverage. He most recently led Deutsche Bank’s financing and solutions group for North Asia, in addition to his responsibilities as Executive Vice-President of Deutsche Bank China and Head of Global Markets, China.

Thomas Zeeb
Head of Exchanges
SIX Group
Thomas Zeeb heads the Exchanges unit of SIX. In this role Tom is, effectively, accountable for the full end-to-end performance and growth of the Swiss Stock Exchange, the Spanish Stock Exchange, the Derivatives Exchange and the SIX Digital Exchange. Prior to this role, Tom was responsible for the Securities & Exchanges unit of SIX, for services covering listings, trading and comprehensive post-trade services of the Swiss Stock Exchange.

Tom joined SIX in 2008 after having worked for Clearstream Banking in London and Luxembourg. As Executive Director of Client Relations, Tom was a member of the company’s Executive Management and a member of the Board of Directors of Clearstream Banking Frankfurt. As Head Sales, Relationship Management & Client Services, Tom was responsible for the development of the European and US businesses.

Mae Cheng (Moderator)
Senior Vice President
Barron's Group, Dow Jones
Mae Cheng is the Senior Vice President of Barron's Group at Dow Jones. She oversees the award-winning financial publications Barron's, MarketWatch, Financial News and Mansion Global. She was previously the publisher and editor at Mansion Global, the premiere news site for luxury residential properties around the world, and Barron's Penta, a wealth management and luxury publication.

Mae has been at the forefront of digital-strategy efforts in newsrooms and has led a number of start-up initiatives. In a prior role as Special Projects Editor for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, Mae worked on the launch of a suite of professional-services content verticals and was key to the development of the editorially-driven events portion of The Wall Street Journal’s subscriber-benefits program.