Hong Kong Activist Investor David Webb Bids Farewell
Renowned activist investor and former investment banker David Webb delivered an emotional goodbye in the midst of a battle against late-stage cancer and spoke about the potential future of his influential Webb-site platform.
David Webb made what could be his final public appearance in a «Farewell Fireside Chat» at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong on Tuesday. Webb has been battling late-stage prostate cancer, the diagnosis of which he first disclosed in June 2020.
«I fought the disease as hard as I could and I'm still fighting but there is an obvious end to it,» the 59-year old Briton said, adding that he would be lucky to reach his 60th birthday on August 29.
Webb-Site
Established in 1998, Webb-site served as a non-profit platform to promote better corporate and economic governance. It includes an extensive database of companies, other organizations as well as key people in Hong Kong and elsewhere, sourced from the public domain. Webb started an orderly shutdown in February with the database of aggregated information to be left available in a public repository on GitHub.
«I can't name it but there's a statutory body that has shown interest in taking parts of this forward hopefully making it publicly available,» Webb shared.
Hopes for the City’s Future
Webb addressed a variety of topics including the economic future of the city and the mainland.
«I believe in the long run that China and Hong Kong will be less autocratic, more democratic and will move away from the authoritarian system because there's no other there's no way to maintain economic growth by central planning,» Webb said. «It's much better to let the free markets work to produce the growth.»
Former Investment Banker
Webb spent 12 years in investment banking, including five years in London before moving to Hong Kong in 1991. He held various other roles in the financial sector including board member of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) and member of the Takeover and Mergers Panel of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).
Webb is best known for his efforts campaigning for retail investor interests, transparency, director independence as well as research, particularly on small-cap companies.
