HKFintech Week 2023 – day 1

HKFintech Week 2023 was buzzing and had an attendance of more than 30,000 attendees. InnovationHongKong was there on day 1 to catch up on insights from the panel sessions and fireside chats, as well as network and visit some exhibition booths.

Great to bump into Lukas Petrikas, HKEX,who was also a judge of the Global Scaleup Competition Finals (part of the Global Fast Track Programme) and hear Henri Arslanian, Nine Block Capital Management conducting a fireside chat with Kris Marszalek, CEO Crypto.com. Great to listen to Irene Chu, KPMG in an informative panel session on Funding & Investments from Seed to IPO at the Venture Stage with Arnold Chan, Airwallex, Kai Yang, HSBC and moderated by Michael Yue, Google. Irene had also given a great report on the state of venture capital at the Cyberport Venture Capital Forum (part of HKFintech Week) earlier in the week.

Good to see Eric Chan, Chief Mission Officer, Cyberport who was moderating a panel session at the Hong Kong & GBA Stage, on HK Scaleups Going Global with Cyberport community speakers David Yeung,Green Monday & Omni Foods, Alvin Kwock, One Degree (insurtech) and Mark Blick, Diginex (software company).

There was also an interesting panel session on Virtual Banking: Cyber Resilience vs Cyber Threat with Frances Fong, HK Information Technology Federation,Dr Chow Kam Pui, HK University, Christina Lai,Virtual Banking Taskforce and Clarice Yue, Clifford Chance.

Animoca Brands was a hive of activity when I stopped by their stand. It was a timely visit with a panel session in progress.Benjamin Lee, Blowfish Studios (in the Animoca stable) was speaking, Yat Sui, Co- Founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands and Rich Robinson, entrepreneur in residence. Great to meet Yat and Benjamin and be able to chat with them after. It was good to learn more about the Phantom Galaxies game early access release on November 15. Computer Gamers were excited to hear about this expansive online multiplayer sci-fi mecha action-RPG launch from Blowfish Studios.

At the HKFintech Association stand, which was a great meeting place with many colleagues stopping for a chat, I caught up with Brian Tang, LITELab at HK University and Jame DiBiasio, Founder & Editor, DigFin AMTD.

Congratulations to WHub – Founders Karen Contet and Karena Belin with their team who were the appointed organisers of HKFintech Week this year and InvestHK.

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