Mr James Fok is the Chief Commercial Officer of CMU OmniClear Limited, a market infrastructure operator co-owned by the Exchange Fund of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX, SEHK:388), which operates the fixed income CSD for the Hong Kong market and serves as the offshore settlement and safekeeping platform for Mainland Chinese cross-border investment. 

Previously, James served for a decade as a senior executive at HKEX, where he played a major role in a number of landmark Chinese capital market internationalisation initiatives, including the launch of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect programme (2014), Bond Connect (2017) and the Hong Kong market’s Listing Reforms (2018), as well as the Group’s acquisition of the London Metal Exchange (2012). In his earlier career, he worked as an investment banker in both Europe and Asia, specialising in the financial services sector.  

James has written and spoken extensively about market structure issues and the intersection between geopolitics and international finance and is author of the book Financial Cold War. He is an Independent Non-Executive Director of Ardmore Shipping Corporation (NYSE: ASC), Vice Chairman of the International Securities Services Association, and a Distinguished Nonresident Fellow of the University of Hong Kong’s Center on Contemporary China and the World. He has also previously served on the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission’s Fintech Advisory Group (2023-24), as an International Member of Ireland for Finance’s Industry Advisory Committee (2021-23), and on the Financial Services Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong Trade and Development Council (2014-21).