Ho Shun Man Simon, Prof

Professor Simon Ho Shun-man is the President of The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSUHK). He was a Commonwealth Scholar and is a certified public accountant in the UK, Australia and Canada. Currently, he is the Editor of the Asian Journal of Business Ethics(Springer), and Member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Ethics (Springer), Advances in Business Ethics Research (Springer), and the “Corporate Governance Literature Series” of Nankai University.

In public services, he is Chairman of the Hong Kong Corporate Governance Forum and Board Member of the China Higher Education Association, the Monte Jade Science and Technology Association, and the Hong Kong-ASEAN Economic Cooperation Foundation (HKAECF). He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Australia, Member of Academic Committee of the Hong Kong Scholar Scheme organised by the Society of Hong Kong Scholars, and Advisor to a number of international bodies.

Prior to joining HSUHK, Professor Ho was Vice Rector (Academic Affairs) of the University of Macau (UM) from 2009 to 2014. Before that he served as Dean of the School of Business and concurrently as Founding Director of the Centre for Corporate Governance and Financial Policy (CCGFP) at the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) from 2004 to 2009. Previously, he taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) from 1982 to 2004 and he was the Director of the School of Accountancy from 1995 to 2002.

Under his leadership, CUHK became the first accounting school outside North America to receive The Association to Advance Collegiate School of Business (AACSB) accreditation in 1998. In 1996, he initiated and established the “Dragon League”, an academic alliance among the four accounting schools of CUHK, Peking University, Fudan University and National Taiwan University. In 1998, he also co-founded the Master in Professional Accountancy Programme jointly organised by CUHK and the Shanghai National Institute of Accounting. At HKBU, he led an undergraduate student team who won the world champion of the CFA Institute’s Global Investment Research Challenge in 2008.

Before his academic career, Professor Ho was an audit staff member at a certified public accountant’s firm, a financial system analyst, and an assistant consultant at the Hong Kong Productivity Council. He was the Founding President of the Hong Kong Academic Accounting Association, Vice President of the International Association for Accounting Education and Research (IAAER), Chairperson of the Organizing Committee of the 2002 IAAER World Congress of Accounting Educators, Member of several committees of Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA), Founding Vice President of the Hong Kong Professionals and Senior Executives Association, and Board Member of the Hong Kong Securities and Investment Institute.

Professor Ho also served as Member on a number of committees in the Hong Kong SAR Government. These include Investor Education Advisory Committee (IEAC) of the Securities and Futures Commission, Board of Review (Inland Revenue), Securities and Futures Appeals Tribunal, Deposit Protection Appeals Tribunal, Advisory Committee on Human Resources Development in the Financial Services Sector, Advisory Group on Directors and Officers Related Provisions (AG3), and the Public Education Committee of Independent Commission Against Corruption.

As an internationally known expert on corporate governance, Professor Ho developed and taught the first university master’s course on corporate governance in Hong Kong at CUHK in 1993. In 2004, he developed and launched the world’s first MSc Programme in Corporate Governance and Directorship in Hong Kong. In 2005, he co-founded the biennial “World Business Ethics Forum” organised jointly by HKBU and UM. Since 2005, under the sponsorship of the World Bank, he has served as Lecturer on “International Corporate Governance” at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance, China.

In 2006, he initiated and formed a strategic alliance with more than 15 other corporate governance research centres in the world. In 2007, he was the key person in developing the Hong Kong Corporate Governance Excellence Awards and the Hong Kong Corporate Governance Charter, organised jointly by the Hong Kong Chamber of Listed Companies and the CCGFP of HKBU.

Professor Ho received three competitive research grants from the Research Grant Council and has published a number of top-ranked academic journal articles. He is a columnist in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the South China Morning Post (educationpost.com.hk), and the China Daily.

In recognition of his contributions to corporate governance and corporate social responsibility, he was the first Chinese awarded the Faculty Pioneer Award (described as Oscar of the business school world by the Financial Times) by the Aspen Institute, USA in 2008. Further, he was elected as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics 2008 by Ethisphere, one of the world’s most recognised bodies in business ethics and anti-corruption. In 2013, in recognition of his distinguished contribution to the CSR of Chinese family businesses, he was granted the Chinese Family Business Research Pioneer Award by the China Private Enterprise Economic Research Association, China.