Tim Lui Tim-leung, the former tax partner of PwC, will succeed Carlson Tong Ka-shing as the third accountant in more than a decade to be made chairman of the watchdog
Hong Kong’s government will appoint a career tax accountant to chair the city’s securities industry watchdog agency, as the incumbent serves out the six-year maximum tenure, according to two sources familiar with the plan.
Tim Lui Tim-leung, the former tax partner of PwC, will succeed Carlson Tong Ka-shing as the third accountant in more than a decade to be chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission, the sources said.
Lui, 63, was selected because of his three-decade accounting career in one of the world’s largest financial firms, keeping with the SFC’s tradition of picking numbers men for the job, the sources said. Tong retired as chairman of KPMG before his appointment in 2012 as the agency’s fourth chairman. Eddy Fong Ching, the SFC’s non-executive chairman from 2006 to 2012, was also a senior PwC partner until his retirement in 2003.
As a retired accountant, Lui would avoid any potential conflicts of interest, the sources said. His familiarity with Hong Kong’s capital market also made Lui the ideal candidate for the job, they said.
Lui was born in Hong Kong to a wealthy family.
His former family home, known as the Lui Seng Chun, is a four-storey tong lau tenement in Mong Kok built in 1931, that has been declared a Grade 1 historical building. It was renovated and refurbished in 2012 and is now being used by the Baptist University as a Chinese medicine and health care centre.
Lui studied for 12 years in Britain, where he obtained a Master of Business Administration degree before joining Coopers & Lybrand’s London office as an articled clerk. He returned to Hong Kong in the early 1980s to the same firm, which later was merged with Price Waterhouse to become PwC, rising to the ranks to senior partner until his retirement.
