It is my pleasure and pressure to be elected as the Chairman

Manchester Business School Alumni Association HK just had its third annual dinner in POC on 12th October 2007 to have the annual celebration and most importantly to celebrate the 15th anniversary of MBS Asia program. Over 140 alumni and guests attended.

I was elected the Chairman of MBSAAHK for the year 2007/8. I felt very honored to be there because we had our honorable guests, Michael Luger, Director of MBS and Nigel Banister, CEO of MBS attended the evening. They flew all the way from UK. Lawrence Johnstone of University of Auckland flew in from New Zealand to attend this event. We had many prominent and distinguished guests.

This year remarks the 15th anniversary of MBS Asia program. We had over 700 MBA graduated from the Asia program in the past 15 years. We have over 400 current students in the region. I really appreciate the strategic decision made by MBS management 15 years ago to start the Asia program because I was one of student being benefited. Christina and her office have been playing vital role for the success of the Asia program.

MBSHKAA is one of the distant relatives of the big MBS Alumni family. We have over 25,000 alumni worldwide and it is growing year on year under the leadership of Director Michael Luger. Actually, we are not so distant. As Thomas Friedman mentioned that the world is flat. We are just one finger tip away. With today’s technologies, we can communicate with our friends anywhere in the world by just a click of the mouse. Anyway, no matter the world is round or flat, I believe Friedman’s wallet is not flat at all.

As the Chairman of the board, I feel the pleasure and pressure. I feel proud to work with my team. When I looked at the profiles of my team members, I realize that I am the least important one. Among 10 of the board member, we have 5 charted accountants, 1 experienced auditor, 2 instructors to the MBA programs, 1 Member of Intuition of Engineer and 2 I.T. experts. All of my team members are highly qualified and successful in their respective fields and in their respective companies. Our deputy Chairman, Derek Ma has over 16 years of accounting and auditing experience. Our honorable treasure, William Chan is current visiting instructor for MBA program with highly respected academic background and experiences and he is holding important positions in various associations, including Institution of Bankers and Financial Advisors; Steven Lin, our honorable secretary is holding key position in a leading bank in Hong Kong. Other members are Andrew Yu, Desmond Leung, Gabriel Chan, May Chuah, May He, Philip Lai. This is a great team!

My pressure come from the fact that we are going to serve so many high talented members. They are so successful in their respective field. Our mission is to create value to our stake holders. We collected over 100 survey forms from the dinner. Their opinions are most important to us. We will compile the survey forms and organize our activities to meet interests of majority of the members. Our successes depend on active participation of our members. Without them, our efforts are meaningless.

I thank my team's efforts and excellent works to prepare this successful evening.

It has been a great evening!