Kent Kedl
Kent Kedl is a Senior Partner in Control Risks’ Greater China and North Asia region. Based in Shanghai, he is responsible for the overall commercial and business operations of the company in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, the Koreas and Mongolia.

Kent has consulted with multinational and local Chinese and Korean corporations across all industries on a diverse range of complex risk issues, from crisis management and operational business controls, to strategic and organisational development programmes. He has particular expertise in the healthcare, food and beverage, and consumer product sectors.

Examples of Kent’s work include:

• Directed crisis management for several high-profile cases in the China healthcare sector.
• Designed and implemented a strategic reorganisation for a company in a high-risk sector in China.
• Worked with an Asia-Pacific CEO to make a strategic acquisition of a competitor, which involved designing and implementing a commercial due diligence programme to validate the target’s claims.

Led a new China franchising strategy for a global fast food company, including identifying potential partners, completing commercial and integrity due diligence and negotiating the final deal.

Prior to joining Control Risks, Kent was general manager and co-owner of Technomic Asia, a boutique strategy consulting firm in Shanghai. His work included target selection, and pre-transaction corporate investigations and negotiations.

Kent has worked as a journalist and radio broadcaster and is a frequent contributor to Asia-based media outlets, as well as the co-author of The China Ready Company (2006, China Pathways).

Kent has a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in East Asian studies from the University of Minnesota. He has also completed graduate studies in journalism and mass communication as a scholar at the China Times Centre for Mass Media and Social Studies.

Keith Xia
Keith is head of Risk Management of Intercontinental Hotel Group Greater China. He lead the risk management works for IHG great china region, including but not limited to the safety, insurance and reputation protection of more than 200 hotels, reputation protection and corporate safety resilience works cross Greater China Region. He is the company compliance committee member and works closely with the company operation committee and internal auditing team in managing the risks associated with the company.

Before joining IHG, Keith was an experienced Highly Protected Risk (HPR) consultant,having10 years risk management consulting experience in multinational companies and had provided risk management consulting for large numbers of fortune 500 companies. He set up and lead the structure risk solution team in Asia via providing financing risk solutions to companies for their finance quantative risk decision. He is a fire protection specialist certified by NFPA(USA), a licensed safety engineer, a certified Level 1 Thermographer and a licensed fire protection project manager by Chinese Government authority. The companies he had been provided risk consulting services including but not limited to Walmart, Carrefour, IBM, B&Q, GM, VOLVO, GSMC, Hynix, Seagate, Shanghai EXPO, HK Metro and airport et.

Acting as key members of the BRR (Business Reputation and Responsibility) at GC, he also attended and delivered speechs at high numbers of risk and safety forums as well as charity activities. He also delivered risk management speeches for academy activities to contribute the community and society.

He holds a bachelor degree in mechanical and a dual degree in advertising. He is fluent English speaker beside his Chinese Mandarin.