Alexa Lam has 40+ years of legal, regulatory and policy experience – 18+ years in corporate and securities law practice in Hong Kong, New York and Chicago, 16+ years as a senior official at the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), and over six years as a law professor at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). She holds law degrees from HKU and the London School of Economics and is currently a fellow of the Department of Law of HKU.
In her private practice (1979 – 1997), Ms. Lam specialized in advising global conglomerates, financial institutions, listed companies and partnerships on their corporate and securities transactions, acquisitions and joint ventures, including cross border corporate activities.
After 18 years of legal practice, Ms. Lam joined the SFC (1998 – 2015). Her first project was to lead Hong Kong’s law reform process that gave birth to the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO) in 2002. Thereafter, as the SFC’s Executive Director of Intermediaries and Investment Products, Ms. Lam was in charge of applying and administering the SFO. Supervising a department of 160+ staff, Ms. Lam was responsible for all licensing, supervision and regulatory decisions relating to SFC-licensed financial institutions and intermediaries, and authorization and regulation of publicly offered investment products.
Upon her subsequent appointment as the SFC Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Policy, China and Investment Products in 2008, Ms. Lam took on the additional role of driving several defining projects that connected the Hong Kong and Mainland China capital markets. These included the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors (QDII), Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFII) and the Mutual Recognition of Funds programs, and the development of offshore RMB products in Hong Kong.
On the international stage, Ms. Lam played a pivotal role as co-chair of the Working Group on Margining Requirements, a key part of the post 2008 global financial reforms under the direction of the G-20 leaders. Leading the world’s securities regulators, Ms. Lam worked with her co-chair, the Director of the Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board (who led the world’s bank regulators) to drive agreement internationally on a set of principles for the regulation of non-centrally cleared derivatives. Published in 2014, these principles have been adopted by financial markets across the globe.
After her retirement from the SFC, Ms. Lam joined HKU as Professor of Legal Practice (2015 – 2018) and served as an independent non-executive director of HSBC Global Asset Management Limited, Hang Seng Bank (China) Limited, and Bank of Communications (Hong Kong) Limited. Thereafter, Ms. Lam continued at HKU as Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor (2018 – 2021) and served as APAC chief executive officer of ICI Global, a trade association for global regulated investment funds.
May 2022
