List of Publications

Asia’s economic transformation over the last quarter century has been phenomenal. Securities services, alongside asset management, have developed from infancy to prosperity in step with the growth of wealth in the region.

This book delves into this amazing history by reviewing 25 key developments in the region as the financial industry evolves from the physical to the electronic age and is now poised for digital transformation going into the future.

Author, Lawrence Au, is a recognised pioneer and thought-leader in Asia’s securities services industry since its nascent development in the early 1990s. He was the former leader of several leading banks’ securities services businesses and was the driving force behind establishing their businesses from the ground up on their journeys to becoming market leaders in the region. He published his first book “Asia’s Financial Industry 1986-2016” in 2016, which captures memorable episodes and events of the region’s financial industry over those four decades.

Here he takes us on a journey to review how the region has integrated into the global financial system and adapted to changes in technology and investor needs – from infrastructure, buy-side and sell-side services, through to cross-border investments and fund services, as it navigates changes in operations and technology.

Sustainable investment is the "way of the future" if the future itself is to be sustainable on earth. This simple truth underlies the efforts by multiple official organisations, led by the United Nations, to foster more responsible attitudes toward stewardship of the planet. The private sector too – the global financial system in particular – has a critical role to play in directing investment into sustainable areas of activity and deflecting it from socially and environmentally harmful activities. Sustainable investment is not just about reforms and responsibilities however. It is also about rewards – financial and otherwise – to those that practice it.

This book argues that sustainable investment is as much about the opportunities offered as the challenges posed in reorienting the financial system toward better and more sustainable outcomes. It seeks to put the many different elements of sustainable investment into a broad context, showing how it has evolved from being a "niche" concept centered largely upon philanthropy to being a viable philosophy of commercial investment.

The book looks especially at two main themes – Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, which broadly seeks to guide investors and businesses into sustainable forms of activity, and Impact Investing, which aims to ensure that such aims are not achieved at the expense of financial return on investment. Sustainable investment also needs to be guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which provide the broad social and economic context. The volume is aimed at the general reader as much as at investment practitioners.