Benjamin Lee | Phoenix Property investors

Mr. Lee is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Phoenix Property Investors, a private equity real estate group that has managed over $12.7B of gross real estate assets across Asia. He serves on the firm's Investment Committee and is also responsible for structuring, capital formation, and the general management of the firm.

Mr. Lee has over 30 years of real estate, capital markets, and asset management experience. Previously, Mr. Lee was a founder and member of the general partner of Strategic Capital Management ("SCM"), an independent, PRC-focused private equity investment firm. Prior to SCM, Mr. Lee worked at Morgan Stanley for approximately ten years. Initially, he served in the firm's proprietary U.S. Government Bond Trading Department in New York. Later, he was head of U.S. Equity Derivatives for Morgan Stanley in Asia (ex-Japan). In addition, Mr. Lee also served as a member of the Management Committee at Terramar Corretora in Brazil, where he was responsible for the management of the brokerage firm's equity and asset management businesses. 

Mr. Lee received an MBA in Finance from the  Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago and serves on its Global Advisory Board. He holds a BA Degree in Economics from Knox College, where he attended via an Institute of International Education ("IIE") Direct Placement Scholarship. Mr. Lee also serves as a voting member of the St. Paul's College Foundation in Hong Kong. 

howard man | Schonfeld

Mr. Man is a Portfolio Manager and Head of Asia Equity Capital Markets for Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, based in Hong Kong.  He is responsible for the firm’s investments in IPOs, follow-on offerings, and pre-IPO private opportunities across the Asia-Pacific, including Japan.  Howard joined Schonfeld from Point72 Asset Management, where he served concurrently in two capacities: as Portfolio Manager for ECM and as Head of Asia-Pacific Equities.  In the latter role, he led Point72’s long-short equity business, with responsibility for hiring and supervising over 50 portfolio managers and analysts across the region.

Mr. Man has over 20 years of professional experience in Asia, with deep expertise in the securities and hedge fund industries as both a fund manager and senior executive.  Previously, he served as Managing Director and Head of Trading for Cash Equities at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.  Howard managed a team of equity traders that committed the firm’s capital to generate growth in client trading volumes across the broader Equities business.  He was the senior leader for Campus Recruiting in Global Markets and won the BAML Global Diversity and Inclusion award for achieving and exceeding gender balance targets in campus hiring.

Howard began his professional career in management consulting.  As part of McKinsey’s Greater China Office, he worked on M&A strategy for local and MNC clients in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (ROC).  Mr. Man received his Bachelor of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.  He serves on the Fundraising Committee for the Children’s Medical Foundation, a non-profit focused on reducing neo-natal mortality in rural China.  Howard is an avid fan of college football and the Boston Red Sox.

Susan Shui-Shien Lin | everyi capital

Susan Lin co-founded EverYi Capital in 2015. EverYi Capital is a consumer sector focused private equity fund with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Susan is highly experienced in the Chinese private equity world, having driven AEA Investors’ private equity business in Asia from 2006-14. Before this, Susan was Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley Taiwan involved in capital markets and mergers and acquisitions transactions in the Greater China region, across financial, technology, and general industry sectors. Prior to Morgan Stanley, she was the Managing Director at Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC where she managed the North Asia private wealth management business.

Moderator: syaru Shirley Lin | UVA & CUHK

Syaru Shirley Lin is Compton Visiting Professor in World Politics at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a Non-resident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Chair of the Asia-Pacific Hub of the Commission on Reform for Resilience, which is assessing the response to the COVID pandemic across the region.

Her research and teaching focus on cross-Strait relations, international and comparative political economy, and the challenges facing the high-income societies in East Asia,  including inequality, demographic decline, financialization, outdated education systems, and the need for further technological innovation. She is the author of Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Economic Policy (Stanford University Press, 2016) which was also published in Chinese in 2019.

She was the youngest woman partner as well as the one of the first Asian partners at Goldman Sachs & Co., where she led the firm’s investment efforts in Asia, managing investments in twelve countries and setting up the Tokyo operation. Most notably, she spearheaded the firm’s investments in technology start-ups in Asia, making it one of the earliest and most successful investors in China. In that capacity, she led the first round of institutional investment in Alibaba and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. Prior to her work in private equity and venture capital, she specialized in the privatization of state-owned enterprises in Singapore and China.

Shirley has served on the boards of numerous private and public companies and currently serves as a director of TE Connectivity, Goldman Sachs Asia Bank and Langham Hospitality Investments. Appointed by the Hong Kong government, she is a member of the Hong Kong Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation and is a director of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, which supports the development and adoption of new therapeutic medical technologies. She is also an advisor to the Talent Circulation Alliance, an initiative to promote Taiwan as a hub for talent for the region and the world.

A native of Taipei, Shirley has been a resident of Hong Kong for three decades. Shirley graduated cum laude from Harvard College and has also studied and worked in Tokyo and Madrid. After retiring from Goldman Sachs, she earned her masters and doctoral degrees at the University of Hong Kong and launched a new career as a scholar, policy analyst, and corporate and non-profit director.