Asset and Wealth Management Conference 2023

Aaron is responsible for the firm's investment and research activities in the region. He covers developments in global markets and helps form the firm's view on various global asset classes and Asia-Pacific investment opportunities. He also works alongside investment teams in Asia-Pacific to develop customized analysis and advice and serves as a resource for the firm's broader investment staff and clients. 

Aaron has experience working with various institutional investors across Asia, including sovereign wealth funds, government pensions, endowments, and family offices. He is frequently cited in financial media and is a presenter at Cambridge Associates' client events and other conferences in Asia.

Aaron joined Cambridge Associates in 2003 and has been a member of the firm's Capital Markets Research team for two decades. Originally based in Arlington, Virginia, Aaron relocated to Singapore in 2010 and Beijing in 2016. He is now based in Singapore.

Aaron is a CFA Charter holder and received his BA in Economics and International Affairs from The George Washington University.

Based in Singapore, Ashish Goyal leads OMERS strategic growth aspirations for Asia.

OMERS through it five investment teams based out of Singapore and Sydney has significant investments in Asia and continues to grow its presence. The public equity, public and private credit, real estate (Oxford Properties), private equity, and infrastructure businesses continue to deploy capital in Asia in high-quality assets, to help deliver stable and secure pensions to our members.

Prior to joining OMERS in 2019, Ashish has built, managed, and led high performance investment teams at leading global Asset Managers, based out of offices in Mumbai, Singapore and Hong Kong. Ashish has three decades of investment experience.

Ashish is a Mechanical Engineer, has an MBA and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He is committed to advocating and advancing financial literacy as well as diversity and inclusion in the workplace. He is a “FWA Male Champion” for the Financial Women’s Association Singapore.

Carolina is the CEO of Arabesque AI, a technology company that empowers portfolio managers to build hyper customised portfolios, at a fraction of the cost and time. Aether, Arabesque AI’s cloud based digital platform, brings AI investment techniques and sustainability expertise to investors. Arabesque AI’s vision is to leverage technology and AI to enable investors express their preferences.

Prior to joining Arabesque AI, Carolina was Global Head of Product, Solutions & Quant at Schroders. She was involved in several technology projects, including mass customisation and block-chain technology to deliver personalised investment tokens. In 2013, she joined Lombard Odier IM as Global Head of Solutions where she focused on sustainability long before it became a prominent trend. She led the integration of ESG across asset classes and built some of the first SDG-aligned thematic investment propositions. Carolina has an extensive quant background and worked in Bob Litterman’s quantitative team at GSAM for almost a decade. She started 20 years ago with factor-based investing that has now evolved into more adaptive AI models.

Carolina holds a PhD in Finance from London Business School, an MBA in Finance from the Université Catholique de Louvain and a BSc in Economics from Université Libre de Bruxelles. Fluent in Italian, French, and English, Carolina's diverse interests encompass modern art, architecture, theatre, skiing, sailing, tennis, and rowing.

Chief Investment Office, Azalea Investment Management Mr CHUE En Yaw is the Chief Investment Officer at Azalea Investment Management Pte. Ltd. and leads the investment team. He is a key member of the team that successfully launched the Astrea PE Bonds and Altrium suite of equity products that broaden investors’ access to private equity, including the retail investors.

Mr Chue joined the Azalea Group in 2018 and was deeply involved in the Astrea Platform since 2014. Prior to Azalea, Mr Chue was a senior member of Temasek s Private Equity Fund Investments team, covering fund relationships and co-investments since 2010. Prior to joining Temasek, he was with Standard Chartered Private Equity and JAFCO (Asia) Investment for almost 10 years. He started his career as an auditor with Arthur Andersen LLP in 1997. Mr Chue is a Chartered Accountant and a CFA charterholder.

Ee Chuan Ng,Managing Director, is COO of BlackRock Solutions in APAC. His focus spans Aladdin, EFront, Aladdin Wealth Tech, Analytics and Modelling business lines in the region where he strengthens operational capabilities to enable businesses to scale.  Ee Chuan also works with APAC  and global business leaders to develop business strategy, optimize operating models and develop talent.

Ee Chuan joined Blackrock in July 2020 following a 19 year career at Bloomberg where he led a number of their strategic businesses in the region.  Most recently, he led their Portfolio Analytics and Bloomberg-Barclays Index business in APAC.  Between 2011-2018, he was the Country Executive for China, leading a strategic build out of the firm’s presence and business in the market.  Prior to 2011, Ee Chuan ran Bloomberg’s Buyside Order Management Systems business in APAC, a business which he also helped pioneer.

Fiona Cho is a managing director, chief operating officer, Asia Pacific, and senior portfolio manager at PGIM Real Estate. Based in Singapore, she is responsible for overseeing PGIM Real Estate’s business and investment operations in the Asia Pacific region, and for the development and portfolio management of Pan-Asia Pacific separate accounts. She is a member of the Asia Pacific Investment Committee and Asia Pacific Executive Council.

Fiona has more than 20 years of diverse real estate experience across the investment management, investment banking, and equity research industries.

Fiona joined PGIM Real Estate in 2008 in Singapore as part of the portfolio team, managing investments across countries and sectors in the Asia Pacific region. She has also been a key member in the region’s new fund and product development initiatives.

Before joining PGIM Real Estate, Fiona was responsible for capital raising and strategic advisory services with the real estate investment banking team at Eastdil Secured (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Co.). Previously, she was an equity research associate at Wells Fargo Securities, covering companies in the U.S. REIT, casino, and hotel sectors.

Fiona holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree with honors from University of California, Berkeley.

Georg Kell is Chairman of Arabesque, and the founding Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative with over 11,000 corporate signatories in more than 150 countries.

Georg helped to establish the Global Compact as the foremost platform for the development, implementation and disclosure of responsible and sustainable corporate policies and practices. In a career of more than 25 years at the United Nations, he also oversaw the conception and launch of the Global Compact’s sister initiatives on investment, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), and on education, the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), together with the Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative (SSE).

Georg was appointed Chairman of Arabesque in 2017. Arabesque is built on the two disruptors of modern finance – ESG and AI – to deliver sustainable intelligence for investors, corporates, and capital markets. Through AI, Arabesque processes vast data sets, identifying patterns through state-of-the-art computational methods, knowledge graphs, and rigorous scientific techniques. By combining big data, machine learning and AI, Arabesque’s group of companies provide sustainable, transparent financial solutions.

Georg was awarded with advanced degrees in economics and engineering from the Technical University Berlin. Afterwards, he started his postgraduate studies and worked as a researcher for the Fraunhofer Institute. He worked as a financial analyst evaluating investment portfolios of several multinational companies in Asia and Africa. Later on, Georg was head of UNCTAD's New York office and senior officer in the executive office of the UN Secretary-General.

Georg serves on various advisory councils, including as spokesperson for the Volkswagen Group Sustainability Council. He has received numerous recognitions from around the world and has been named among the "100 Most Influential in Business Ethics" every year since 2011.

Ivan is trained and worked in the operations and management of various industries, including environmental, power and utilities, military and healthcare. Ivan is also a member of the Rotary Club of Singapore, Worldwide Who’s Who and Singapore Think Tank and Architect of Life for Changi Prison. He has extensive business experience in Singapore and overseas markets, including China, the ASEAN, Middle East and the Americas. He has also built up an excellent network of contacts including statesmen.

Ivan has successfully led and developed till financial closed a number of greenfield and brownfield projects exceeding US$4.2 billion. He has also built up and turned around finances for various entities including a public listed company. The latest milestone achievement is the successfully partnership between two leading environmental companies in India and China, anchoring the largest environmental project in India and first of its kind strategic partnership agreement signed in New Delhi, between the Sino-Indo partners at the India-China Strategic Economic Dialogue on 26th Nov 2012. The estimated joint investment is USD 485 million and an estimated revenue of USD 2.4 billion.

Ivan has successfully raised over US$380 million since 2016 for pre-IPO shares and Public-Listed several companies over the course his career in Singapore and Australia Stock Exchange, AIMS in the United Kingdom and NASDAQ in the USA.

Ivan was awarded the Executive of the Year for 2014 Business Operations Management Industry by the WorldWide Who’s Who and other recent awards include Singapore Business Review Listed Business award for 2019 and World Intellectual Property Office (Singapore) IP Awards for 2019 Business Model.

Jochim spent the last 17 years leading decision science teams in UOB’s retail and wholesale banking business units. He and his team are responsible for developing predictive models in the areas of credit risk (credit scoring / rating, Basel capital, IFRS 9), compliance (AML), and customer management / monetization (acquisition, cross/up-sell, attrition, etc). For the wealth management business, Jochim’s models are used for wallet sizing, product recommendation, personalized client communication / research reports, network analytics for AML, wealth advisor optimization, etc. His current focus is on augmenting / updating existing models with alternative / big data, more efficient machine learning algorithms, including large language models. Prior to UOB, Jochim was a Trading Risk Specialist at BP and had also worked in various consulting roles in the areas of credit modeling, market risk and derivatives valuation.

Simon is responsible for driving the growth of real estate assets under management and funds under management (FUM) for CapitaLand Investment (CLI)’s PERE business. Prior to joining CLI in 2021, Simon was the Managing Director, Global Chief Investment Officer and Head of U.S. Equity for BlackRock Real Estate, where he was responsible for the overall investment strategy and performance of global real estate portfolios, including real estate funds, investment vehicles and research worldwide. Before joining BlackRock, Simon was co-founder, director, and global CEO of MGPA, which held real estate FUM of over US$14 billion across Europe and Asia. He was previously President for Hawaii at The Howard Hughes Corporation based in the USA where he directed the master planning, development, construction, sales, operations, and marketing activities of the 60-acre Ward Village. Simon has extensive global experience, and was based in Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, New York City and Honolulu over the course of his career. He has over 30 years of experience in infrastructure and real estate across North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe.

Simon holds a Bachelor of Commerce, Marketing and Human Resources at Griffith University, Australia. He is a Global Trustee of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and past Chairman of ULI South Asia.

Taimur Baig, PhD, heads global economics as well as macro strategy for interest rate, credit, and currency at DBS Group Research. He also advises the bank on risk management and investment strategy.

Prior to joining DBS in 2017, Dr. Baig was a Principal Economist at the Economic Policy Group, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Earlier, he spent nine years at Deutsche Bank’s Singapore office, where his last position was Managing Director and Chief Economist, Asia. During 1999-2007, he was based in Washington, DC, at the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund, where his last position was Senior Economist.

Dr. Baig has published extensively for both specialists and a general audience, on areas including monetary policy, digital currency, financial technology, climate change, demographics, frontier markets, fiscal policy efficacy, and financial market contagion. He is the host of “Kopi Time,” a widely followed podcast series on markets and economies.

Dr. Baig is an Honorary Advisor to the Global CFO Network, Director Fellow at the Asian Financial Cooperation Association, and Council Member of the Economic Society of Singapore. Dr. Baig holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He attended London School of Economics and Wabash College for his B.A. in Economics.

A renaissance man who’s spent 23 years of his life in Hawaii, Warren made Singapore his home again in 2018. The enterprising man immediately jumped into the local tech start-up scene, first SCash Technologies and subsequently co-founded Xctuality with Adrian. In Oct 2022, Xctuality launched XctuaLyfe, becoming Singapore’s first B2B2C Metaverse platform. Beyond XctuaLyfe is Warren’s vision of building a tech ecosystem to empower lifestyles in Smart Cities.  And at the core of this future smart city is urban food & farming, which led to the founding of MetaFarms together with his JV partner, FoodStarter.

Warren graduated from Hawaii Pacific University, with an academia in hospitality, finance, and information systems. He spent his career predominantly running his own investment management advisory, and in his early years earned his CFA charter. In 2014, he became a Jetsurf dealer and introduced the extreme sport of motorized surfing to Singapore. His futuristic ideation, passion for business development and keen interest in the zero-to-one nature of tech start-ups led him to where he is today.

On the weekends, you’ll find the avid reader and traveller salsa dancing or on his jetboard somewhere on Sentosa Island in Singapore, or what he calls, his little sliver of Hawaii.

Wee Yap is a Managing Director, Private Investments of the Firm. He is responsible for investments in private credit and is also an investment committee member for both SeaTown Private Credit Fund and SeaTown Private Capital Fund.

Prior to joining the Firm, Wee Yap was Chief Executive Officer of Fullerton Investment Management Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fullerton Financial Holdings. He was previously the Head of Mezzanine Capital, UOB Bank, focusing on Asia Pacific private debt opportunities, as well as the Chairman of Investment Committee.

Prior to that, Wee Yap was with JP Morgan covering pre-IPO financing and other forms of private financing. Wee Yap was leading DBS Private Equity unit covering Greater China and South-East Asia, managing both private equity and private debt strategies, before joining JP Morgan.

From 1994-2003, Wee Yap worked in the corporate lending team at DBS Bank. His experience in DBS includes NPL restructuring and was instrumental in creating new credit risk rating and credit risk pricing models. Wee Yap, a CFA charterholder, holds a Bachelor of Business from Nanyang Technological University (Second Upper).