Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Professor Chen Zhiwu, a professor of finance at the Yale School of Management, organized a conference on China which I attended over the last few days. There were a number of interesting participants and keynote speakers. I met Jeffrey Williams who served for a period as CEO of Shenzhen Development Bank after Newbridge capital gained a controlling stake in it. He must be the first foreigner to have headed a PRC bank since 1949.

There were panels on China’s stock markets, bond market, banking industry, film industry, real estate and other sectors. The conference included a good mixture of academics and “practitioners.”

One panel was about the development of the legal profession in China. I was a discussant for that session, commenting on a paper by Nicholas Howson, now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and formerly the partner in charge of the Beijing office of Paul, Weiss (when I was there as an associate, in fact).