Keynote Speakers

Sri Mulyani Indrawati
Managing Director
World Bank Group

Sri Mulyani Indrawati is Managing Director at the World Bank, a position she has held since June 2010.  In her role as Managing Director, she is responsible for the World Bank’s global operations as well as knowledge products in the thematic areas of human development, sustainable development, poverty reduction and economic management, and financial and private sector development. In addition, she oversees the Integrity Vice-Presidency, the Office of Evaluation and Suspension, and the Sanctions Board Secretariat. Previously Ms Indrawati served as Indonesia’s Minister of Finance, in addition to being the Coordinating Minister of Economic Affairs. She led the Indonesian National Development Planning Agency prior to her position as Finance Minister. Her earlier positions included Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund, faculty member at the University of Indonesia, and Visiting Professor at the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State University in the US. Ms Indrawati holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois in the US, and a BA in Economics from the University of Indonesia.

Lim Hng Kiang
Minister for Trade and Industry
Singapore

Lim Hng Kiang is Minister for Trade and Industry of the Republic of Singapore. He is also Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and a Board Director of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC). Mr Lim assumed his current post in 2004, and has served in a number of other government positions, including Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office (2003-2004), Second Minister for Finance (1998-2004), Minister of Health (1999-2003), and Minister of National Development (1995-1999). He joined the civil service in 1986, beginning his career in the Ministry of Defence, after graduating from the Kennedy School at Harvard University with a Masters in Public Administration and from Cambridge University with First Class Honours (Distinction) in Engineering.

Cesar Purisima
Secretary of Finance
Philippines

Cesar V. Purisima was appointed Finance Secretary by President Benigno S. Aquino III in June 2010, having already served in that role in 2005. He was Trade and Industry Secretary in 2004. In October 2012, he was named Finance Minister of the Year by Euromoney Magazine for his "careful and successful stewardship" of the Philippine Economy. He was also recognised in 2011 as Finance Minister of the Year by Emerging Markets Magazine. Before his roles in government, Mr Purisima was Area Managing Partner of the Asia Pacific Assurance Practice of Andersen Worldwide in 2001-2002, and Regional Managing Partner as Head of Andersen Worldwide's ASEAN operation in 2000-2001. He was member of the Global Board of Andersen Worldwide in 1999-2002 and was on the Global Executive Board of Ernst and Young in 2002-2004. Mr Purisima obtained his Bachelor of Science in Commerce from De La Salle University in Manila and his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in the US.

Sergey Storchak
Deputy Finance Minister
Russia

Sergey A. Storchak became Deputy Finance Minister of the Russian Federation in November 2005. Previously, among other positions, he was Director of Foreign Finance Relations, State Debt and State Financial Assets at the Finance Ministry (2004-2005), and Deputy Chairman of the Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs (1998-2004). He began his diplomatic career in the USSR Permanent Mission to the United Nations in 1988. Mr Storchak’s achievements have been recognised with several national honours, including the Order of Friendship (2007), and the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation (2006). He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, specialising in international economic relations, and also has a degree in Economics.

Areepong Bhoocha-Oom
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance
Thailand

Areepong Bhoocha-Oom was appointed Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance of Thailand in 2010. Prior to that, he served as Director General of the Ministry’s Excise Department (2009-2010), and Director General of the State Enterprise Policy Office (2007-2009). He began his career in civil service in 1988 in the Ministry of Finance after working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. Among his other current roles, Dr Bhoocha-Oom is Chairman of the Government Housing Bank, and a member of the Board of Directors of Thai Airways International. He has served as Chairman of the Government Lottery Office and Chairman of TOT. He has a BS in International Management from Boston University, an MBA in Finance from Marshall University in the US, and a PhD in Finance from the University of Mississippi.

Speakers

Hans-Martin Aerts
Head of Infrastructure Asia
APG Asset Management

Hans-Martin Aerts is the Head of Infrastructure Asia at APG Asset Management. APG is a Dutch pension services provider in the collective pensions market, providing pension fund administration, asset management, management support and communication services to pension funds in the Netherlands. For these pension funds and their 4.5 million active and retired participants from the public and private sectors representing over 30% of all collective pension schemes in the Netherlands, APG manages pension assets totaling about €325 billion as of 31 December 2012. Mr Aerts moved to Hong Kong in 2007 to establish the Hong Kong office of APG and has since been responsible for managing the infrastructure investments in Asia-Pacific. Prior to working for APG, he was a Senior Portfolio Manager at ABP. He joined ABP in 2001 and worked in various areas, including infrastructure, structured finance and global equities. Mr Aerts is a CFA charter holder, and holds an MSc in Economics from Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Cosette Canilao
Executive Director
PPP Center Philippines

Cosette V. Canilao is the Executive Director of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center in the Philippines. Prior to joining the PPP Center, she was a Director at Standard Bank, where she established and headed a distressed debt servicing business in the Philippines, and was President and CEO of various special purpose vehicle (SPV) entities. She is also a former partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, heading the Crisis Management Practice and Financial Services Industry consulting. Ms Canilao started her career in programme lending and corporate banking. She received a Master of Science in Finance degree from the University of the Philippines and attended an executive programme at Harvard Business School.

Ian Greer
Managing Director and Analytical Manager, Infrastructure Ratings Asia-Pacific
Standard & Poor’s

Ian Greer is a Managing Director and Analytical Manager for Infrastructure ratings within Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services’ Corporate & Government Ratings group in Asia-Pacific. Based in Melbourne, Mr Greer leads the Standard & Poor’s Infrastructure analytical team in Asia-Pacific. He is also responsible for developing S&P’s global criteria in the infrastructure and project finance sectors. Before his current role, Mr Greer was head of S&P’s Infrastructure and Project Finance team in Australia and New Zealand. In addition, he has led criteria development, delivered numerous internal and external training programmes, and participated in high-profile external events. Before joining S&P in 1997, Mr Greer spent eight years as a project finance banker. He was involved in many infrastructure financings covering debt capital markets and bank syndications – mainly in Australia and New Zealand, but also in Asia, Europe and North America. Before becoming a banker, he spent 11 years in the mining industry, including establishing a gold-mining project in West Africa. Mr Greer is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australia, a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and the Australian Institute of Management. He is also Chair of the Australian Branch Council of the International Project Finance Association, and is on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Infrastructure Advisory Council. Mr Greer holds a Bachelor’s degree (Honours) in Science from the University of Queensland and an MBA from Cranfield, UK. 

James Harris
Managing Partner
Hogan Lovells

James Harris heads Hogan Lovells' infrastructure and project finance practice for Asia, based in Singapore. He is also the Managing Partner of Hogan Lovells' Singapore office with more than 26 years’ experience advising governments, multilateral agencies, corporates and lenders across Asia, the Middle East, Australia and Europe on numerous infrastructure-based transactions in sectors covering leisure, gaming, entertainment, energy, oil and gas/petrochemical, resources and mining, water/sanitation, transport (air, sea, road, rail), education and sports, as well as cement plants, hotels, general manufacturing and infrastructure funds. Mr Harris also heads Hogan Lovells' Asia Infrastructure Group, a multi-disciplinary group of lawyers focusing on the full spectrum of infrastructure as a unique asset class in its own right. He is also Chairman of the International Project Finance Association for Asia and a founding member of the APLMA Project Finance Committee. Mr Harris is also a contributing editor for Asia with the International Financial Law Review, and is widely recognised as a leading project finance and PPP lawyer in several industry publications.

Clive Kerner
CEO
Clifford Capital

Clive Kerner was appointed CEO of Clifford Capital in July 2012. He has more than 25 years of emerging markets debt finance experience, as well as a proven track record as CEO of start-up financial institutions. Before joining Clifford Capital, he spent four years (2007-2011) as CEO of Linq Asia Capital AG, a specialist finance company focused on high yield and mezzanine credit investing in Southeast Asia, joining at its start-up stage. Prior to this, he spent two years (2005-2007) with PT Sampoerna Strategic, the Sampoerna family office. He previously spent 19 years (1986-2005) in investment banking with Kleinwort Benson Ltd (which subsequently became Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein). During this time he worked exclusively on the power, utilities and infrastructure sectors in emerging markets, primarily Asia, and became the regional head of the firm’s Asian Utilities, Infrastructure and Project Finance business.

Izumi Kobayashi
Executive Vice President
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)

Izumi Kobayashi joined the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the political risk insurance arm of the World Bank Group. as Executive Vice President in November 2008. Ms Kobayashi came to MIGA from Merrill Lynch in Tokyo, where she was President and Representative Director. She joined Merrill Lynch in 1985 to work on the derivatives markets, and subsequently held a number of high-level global leadership roles, including Director of Operations and Chief Administrative Officer. At Merrill Lynch, Ms Kobayashi successfully developed the company’s business in global financial services and its client franchise, working with international teams ranging in size from 10 people to over 1,000. A graduate of Seikei University in Japan, Ms Kobayashi was featured in the October 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal’s "50 Women to Watch", and in 2004 she received the "Business Woman of the Year" award from Veuve Clicquot.

Christopher Lee
Founder and Managing Partner
Highstar Capital

Christopher H. Lee is the Founder and Managing Partner of Highstar Capital, an independent, fourth generation fund manager with more than US$5 billion of assets under management. Highstar seeks to make value added, operationally focused private equity investments in energy, transportation and environmental services infrastructure businesses and assets, principally in North America and Europe. Mr Lee is a leader in infrastructure investments, with particular expertise in public private partnerships. Since the 1980s, he has worked on PPPs in Asia, Latin America and the US. He co-authored an opinion piece for Politico with Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley on Ports America’s recent 50-year PPP in the Port of Baltimore and has appeared on CNBC. Mr Lee is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Chairman of the Capital Campaign for the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He has a BA in History from Johns Hopkins. 

Patrick Mispagel
Associate Managing Director, Project Infrastructure finance Group
Moody's Investors Service

Patrick Mispagel manages Moody’s Hong Kong-based Project and Infrastructure Finance Group (PIF), dedicated to rating transactions in this sector throughout Asia (ex Japan and Australia). He is also responsible for coordinating outreach to investors and other market participants for Moody’s PIF Group and Corporate Finance Group for the broader Asia region. Prior to joining the Hong Kong office, Mr Mispagel was based in Moody’s New York office where he managed a number of analytic teams in the US Public Finance Group, including analysts in Moody’s Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas and Boston offices. In addition to a decade with Moody’s, Mr Mispagel spent time as an underwriter with a bond insurer working on an array of high yield municipal transactions in the health care, higher education, human services, tribal, and project finance sectors. He has also worked on a number of global and US-based corporate and public affairs initiatives with organisations in Washington, DC, Missouri and California. Mr Mispagel holds an MBA from New York University and a BA in Political Science from the University of California at Davis. He also completed the Coro Fellows Program in St Louis, Missouri.

David Pilling
Asia Editor
Financial Times

David Pilling is the Financial Times’ Asia Editor, appointed in 2008.  He oversees the FT’s coverage of the Asia region from Afghanistan to Australia, including China, India and Japan. In addition to directing the work of regional correspondents, and overseeing the editing and commissioning team in Hong Kong, Mr Pilling writes an award-winning weekly column on Asian business, politics and economics, which appears worldwide. He regularly contributes longer features, including for the Weekend FT, and frequently interviews business and political leaders throughout the region. Mr Pilling joined the FT in 1990 and worked on the international and main news desks in London before being posted to Santiago, Chile in 1993. Between 1994 and 1997, he was based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before returning to London to become Deputy Editor of the Comment and Analysis Page. Between 1999 and 2002, Mr Pilling was the Global Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Correspondent, covering topics from mega-pharmaceutical mergers to the scourge of Aids in Africa and the scientific race to decode the human genome. In 2002, he moved to Japan for a six-year stint as Tokyo Bureau Chief, where he charted the Koizumi years. He has won numerous reporting prizes, most recently for coverage of Japan and China, both individually and as part of FT teams. He was awarded the Best Commentator prize by the Society of Publishers in Asia in both 2011 and 2012. He was also named Best Foreign Commentator for 2011 in the UK’s Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards, for coverage of China, Japan and Pakistan. Mr Pilling is an Assistant Editor of the FT.

Sergio Pimenta
director, East Asia and the Pacific
IFC

Sérgio Pimenta serves as Director East Asia and the Pacific at IFC, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank Group. Based in Hong Kong, he directs IFC's advisory and investment operations in the region with a financing volume of close to $3 billion in fiscal year 2012, and oversees over 300 staff working across more than 20 countries. Prior to his current role, Mr Pimenta served as Director responsible for Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services in South and East Asia. He was in charge of investment origination, structuring and portfolio management in the region’s manufacturing, services, agribusiness, health and education sectors. From 2005 to 2010, Mr Pimenta was a Senior Manager, heading the Manufacturing, Agribusiness and Services sectors in Europe, Middle East and North Africa, based in Washington DC and then Istanbul.  Between 2002 and 2005, he served as the Special Assistant to IFC’s Executive Vice President and the World Bank’s Managing Director. Prior to joining the World Bank Group through its Young Professional Program in 1996, Mr Pimenta worked for the French Ministry of Finance as well as the International Department of Banque Nationale de Paris. Mr Pimenta holds an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, and a post-graduate degree from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, also in Paris. 

Arun Sen
CEO
Lanco Power International

Arun Sen, CEO of Lanco Power International, has been a developer and investor in the international power and renewables sectors for the last 20 years. Previously, he was Managing Director of Coromandel Advisors, a Singapore-based company that he founded in 2007 to provide strategic and transactional advice to global investors in the infrastructure and clean energy sectors. In 2002, Mr Sen co-founded Globeleq Ltd, a Houston-based power investment company, and successively held the positions of COO, Head of Latin America, and Head of Asia. Between 2002 and 2006, Globeleq invested US$850m in power businesses in emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America and, in 2007, returned US$1.8 billion to shareholders upon exit. Previously, Mr Sen co-founded and was COO of Hart Energy International, a Houston-based company that developed and invested in power businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean. From 1994 to 1999, he was Vice President at Coastal Power Company, an affiliate of a Houston-based Fortune 50 energy company, and from 1990 to 1993, he was Vice President at Hart Associates, a Washington, DC-based company that pioneered the privatisation and development of power and environmental projects in Eastern Europe. Mr Sen received an MS degree in Finance from the American University, Washington, DC.

John Walker
Head of Infrastructure Asia
Macquarie Capital

John Walker is Head of Infrastructure, Utilities and Renewables Asia for Macquarie Capital. Under his leadership, Macquarie has completed its first Dim Sum bond for a Chinese utility, closed the first infrastructure fund in the Philippines and successfully advised China Gas on a hostile takeover defence in Hong Kong. Mr Walker is also Chairman of Macquarie Group of Companies Korea. He established Macquarie’s Korean business in 2000 with only five staff. It now comprises 12 businesses with 7 funds and has a total value of assets invested of approximately $A20 billion, in Korea and internationally. Prior to Korea, Mr Walker was based in Australia as Global Head of Government Business for Macquarie’s Investment Banking Group. Previously he was Executive Vice President at Bankers Trust, after making the transition from the public sector where he held Chief Executive positions in Australia, including the Director General of Transport. In Korea, Mr Walker received a citation from the Chairman of the Financial Services Commission and also received the President’s citation in 2004. Mr Walker formally became a Permanent Resident of the Republic of Korea and was also made an Honorary Citizen of Seoul City in 2009.

Francis Yeoh Sock Ping
Managing Director
YTL Group

Tan Sri Dr Francis Yeoh Sock Ping, CBE was trained as a civil engineer and took over the running of YTL in 1988, growing it into a global conglomerate that owns and manages infrastructure assets and regulated utilities. Ranked as one of Asia’s 25 most powerful and influential business personalities by both Fortune and BusinessWeek magazines, Tan Sri Francis is also an independent non-executive director of HSBC and a founder of both the Malaysian Business Council and Capital Markets Advisory Council. He was Judging Chairman of the 2011 Ernst and Young World Entrepreneur of Year Award. Tan Sri Francis supports environmental conservation and renewable energy initiatives, serving on Nature Conservancy’s Asia Pacific Council. He is also Regional Chairman of International Friends of the Louvre and the primary driving force behind the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre. In 2010, he was named Primus Inter Pares Honouree of the Oslo Business for Peace Award by a panel of Nobel Laureates, for actively advocating socially responsible business ethics and practices. He was also a recipient of the Corporate Social Responsibility Award at the 2010 CNBC Asia Business Leaders Awards. Tan Sri Francis was recognised by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2006.