Eric Abelev, Account Director, MSL Hong Kong:
MSLGROUP has developed centres of excellence for its financial communications practice across a number of key global markets including New York, London, Paris, Dubai and Mumbai. In Asia, we gathered our senior-most financial communications practitioners from around the region for the second time in two consecutive years in Asia’s World City – Hong Kong.
Looking at the macro situation, markets have been more volatile in the past four years than in any other period in recent history. There is no sign that this volatility will let up any time soon, and the uncertainty that this kind of climate creates demands for experienced communicators that can send the right messages at the right times to the market, to stakeholders and to the media.
This was the prevailing thought that led us into the latest incarnation of the financial communications summit, which was chaired by MSLGROUP Asia president Glenn Osaki and our regional financial communications lead, Jaideep Shergill.
The agenda called for a mix of meeting room activities as well as offsite visits and a bit of fun, the latter of which included dinner at Happy Valley’s Hong Kong Jockey Club on race night. I won’t go into the details but what I can say is that we are all much better communications practitioners than we are gamblers – of this I’m fairly certain!
We also had a chance to visit the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange for a specially prepared presentation by Albert Helmig, the Exchange’s President. Mr. Helmig shared with us the ins and outs of operating a commodities exchange and we were able to learn more about the advantages of being able to conduct all trading activities via an electronic platform of the kind the Mercantile Exchange employs for its clients. Special thanks to the entire Mercantile Exchange team including Raymond Ma, Aubrey Ho, and of course, Mr. Helmig himself for facilitating such a fascinating and unique opportunity for the MSL team.
Our onsite meetings afforded a chance for participants to present best practice case studies, contribute thoughts towards our service offerings, and exchange ideas about how best to offer even stronger regional support to our financial services and/or financial communications clients. On the second day, we were joined by Capital MSL co-founders Richard Campbell and Steffan Williams, who offered their perspective on the opportunities to extend support to Asian-based clients navigating often difficult transactions in this part of the world.
There are some exciting developments in the pipeline for MSLGROUP Asia Financial Communications and we look forward to sharing them in the not so distant future – so please, stay tuned for more shortly!
