Press Release

The Government Appoints 6 Directors to the Board of HKEx

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

The Financial Secretary today (April 15) appointed six persons as members of the board of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited ("HKEx"). The appointed directors are Messrs Tim Freshwater, Charles Lee and K S Lo, who are on a one-year term, and Messrs Fong Hup, Leong Ka-chai and Liu Jinbao, who are on a two-year term. The appointments will take effect from 16 April 2003.

The appointments are made under section 77(1) of the Securities and Futures Ordinance (SFO). That provision, together with section 77(2) of the SFO and Articles 90(1) and 92 of HKEx's Articles of Association, empowers the Financial Secretary to appoint no more than six persons to be members of the board of directors of the HKEx.

According to section 63(2)(a) of the SFO, HKEx has the statutory duty to act in the interest of the public, having particular regard to the interest of the investing public.

Announcing the appointments, the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Mr Frederick Ma said, "The directorship is a commitment to serve the public interest. It is crucial to the future development of the financial markets in Hong Kong, having regard to our objectives of strengthening our competitiveness as an international financial centre and developing the Hong Kong market into the premier capital formation centre of China. We are grateful to the appointees for accepting this important task."

The Board of the HKEx comprises six directors elected by shareholders, the Chief Executive of HKEx, and six appointees of the Financial Secretary. "We trust all the directors will work closely together to the best interest of both the HKEx and the public as a whole," Mr Ma said.

"We are also most grateful to Messrs John Chan, John Strickland and Rodney Ward, who retired from the HKEx Board after the HKEx AGM today, for their dedicated services and invaluable counsel to the HKEx in the past three years during the initial stage of the merger. We trust that we could continue to count on their support for the future development of the securities and futures market of Hong Kong."


The following is a brief CV of the six appointees -

Name

Titles

Fong Hup

* Senior Adviser of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

Tim Freshwater

* Chairman (Corporate Finance (Asia)) and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC

Charles Lee

* Consultant of the Woo, Kwan, Lee & Lo

Leong Ka-chai

* Chairman of Roctec Group of Companies

Liu Jinbao

* Chief Executive of Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited

K S Lo

* Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Great Eagle Holdings Limited

1