Episode 59 - Julia Charlton

In this episode, we meet corporate finance lawyer Julia Charlton, a hugely respected and vastly experienced legal practitioner in Hong Kong’s financial sector. Julia looks back on her career journey, beginning with her upbringing in the northeast of England, practicing corporate law in London, and her bold decision as a working mother to relocate to Hong Kong. As she explains to our Senior Partner Colin Cohen, her arrival came at a time when mainland Chinese companies were just beginning to have a major impact on the city’s markets. Stay tuned. 

00:46 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:45 Current Projects and Crypto Licensing
02:26 Charltons' Recent Award and Firm History
03:40 Julia's Early Life and Education
06:51 Career Beginnings and Move to Hong Kong
11:58 Founding Charltons and Early Challenges
14:49 Learning Mandarin and Working in China
17:23 Running a Law Firm and People Management
18:47 Cryptocurrency and Regulatory Landscape
23:28 IPOs and Hong Kong's Financial Market
28:17 Commonwealth Chambers of Commerce
32:19 Greater Bay Area and Future Prospects
35:49 Personal Life and Hobbies
36:46 Conclusion and Farewell

Host: Colin Cohen
Director: Niall Donnelly
Producer and VO: Thomas Latter   

Established in 1985, Boase Cohen & Collins is an independent law firm equipped with Hong Kong knowledge and global reach. Please visit our website.

Transcript

[00:46:00] Colin: Hello everyone. My guest today is corporate finance lawyer, Julia Charlton. Founder and principal partner of award-winning law firm, Charltons. She is an omnipresent figure in our city's financial sector holding regulatory positions with the stock exchange of Hong Kong and the Security and Futures Commission.

She advises regulators. Financial institutions and listed. companies She's vastly experienced in Securities Law, Capital Markets, Private Equity, M and A, Investment Funds, and the like. She's also fluent in Mandarin. Julia, welcome to Law & More and as I always ask my guests what's been keeping you busy recently, 

[00:46:48] Julia: Thank you, Colin. Well, always busy, as actually today I've been rather busy trying to sort out my rooftop for the typhoon that's apparently on its way. So that kept me rather occupied since early this morning. But generally we're having a very interesting time.

We are working on some stable coin applications to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which is the new legislation, which came into effect on the 1st of August. So that's very interesting and challenging. We've been looking at all sorts of crypto licensing, not just in Hong Kong, but in other parts of the world.

For example, Cayman, BVI, Dubai, Mauritius. So that's really a global market for crypto law, and Hong Kong needs to really keep on its toes, which I think it's trying to do to make sure that it stays relevant and competes globally.

[00:47:36] Colin: That's very interesting and we will talk about that a little bit later. But first of all, congratulations, Charltons have just been named Transactional Boutique Law firm of a year at the 2025 LAB Hong Kong Law Awards, the Oscars for all the lawyers in there.

I mean, the interesting point is that our firm. Bose, Cohen and Collins. We are associated I'm a common partner and we got nominated for criminal corporate staff. Not matrimonial this year and other bits and pieces. Anyway, well done.

Let's go back in time a little. 

[00:48:11] Julia: Yes. I was actually rooting for you when I was there and I thought, wow, if they win, I'm gonna go and claim this prize for you because I don't think any of your people were actually there. 

[00:48:18] Colin: No, we, we, we weren't there anyway. 

[00:48:19] Julia: Well, I just wanted to say what an immense pleasure it's been to be an association and continues to be with Boase, Cohen and Collins. I just think it's been a wonderful success all these years and it's been so enjoyable working with you guys.

[00:48:31] Colin: Yeah. Yeah. And just for our listeners, just to sort of give it to little bit of a roadmap. I mean, as I said, Julia is purely corporate finance and transactional. Anything, which is litigious, Julia doesn't really like that and some of her clients do get in a little mess or two and she does pass 'em off to us and we do the same thing.

So it works really, really well. Let's go back in time, Julia, from the North of England. Newcastle supporter, not Sunderland. 

[00:49:00] Julia: Oh it depends who's playing. I can support Sunderland when they're playing. 

[00:49:03] Colin: Okay. So tell us your background, your schooling and how you got into the law. Tell us a little bit about your early days. 

[00:49:10] Julia: Well, it was rather disruptive my early days because my parents had split up when I was about three years old, and my mother moved as a single parent to Sunderland in the early 1960s with me.

And we arrived in a mini that was all she had in a suitcase, and she managed to get a job as a lecturer in a fairly newly open technical college, as a catering lecturer actually. And I went to a nursery school in Sunderland, which was an amazing place . It had full-time nursery education for all children over six weeks old.

And I went to a school called Saint Columbus, which actually still exists as a church, and I remember it extremely well. We then moved to a different town in commuting distance called Claydon, where I went to school till I was 10, at which stage my mother actually became a head of department in a technical college, South Shields Marine and Technical College, actually one of the UK's largest marine colleges.

And I started a school in Newcastle and lived some of the time with my grandparents who lived nearer to that school and some of the time in Claydon. And then South Shields, my mother remarried around that time to my stepfather, Paul Lamb. 

[00:50:23] Colin: So north of England, enjoying yourself. So how guided you into the law? What took your interests to become a solicitor? 

[00:50:31] Julia: Well, I actually wanted to be a journalist because my family had a lot of connections with journalists, but my mother very cleverly persuaded me to study law and then she said, well, you can still be a journalist if you want to after that. So having studied law, of course, I became a lawyer.

Actually, my stepfather was a magistrate and we had a lot of friends who were lawyers, but I don't think my mother ever imagined that I would set off on the path I did of corporate finance and being in Hong Kong and so on at that time, I think she was imagining I would probably be a lawyer in Newcastle and stick around.

But it worked out very well for me. And of course, as you progress in your career, you do end up writing more and doing things which are perhaps more congruent that a journalist might do, 'cause you branch out a bit in your career. So it ended up being very good for me. I do sometimes wonder if I should have been a barrister.

At the time it was very much drilled into me that you had to be well off and almost independently wealthy to be a barrister, which I don't think it was actually true. It was probably thinking from a bygone age, even back then. But I do sometimes wish I had done that 'cause I really, really enjoy the academic side of law.

And one thing I regret over the last particularly 10 years, Colin, of working with you is I kind of wish I'd maybe learn more from you about litigation because that would've been a great opportunity for me because you are such a great litigator.

I have to say. You mentioned earlier, I don't do any litigation actually. I do manage cases sometimes for clients. 

 Yes, yes So do all the strategic management appointing law firms and so on for them. 

[00:52:02] Colin: Well, we'll talk about a little bit, 'cause I'm gonna develop that with you. Now, king's College was where you did your degree. Enjoy it there?

[00:52:08] Julia: It was tough, to be honest, Kings. Not academically tough particularly, but it's quite tough being a student in London.

I don't think it's a great campus experience. I think anyone who can survive and get a reasonably good degree from London University is probably well equipped for modern life, I would say. 

[00:52:26] Colin: So, you did your degree and then you did your traineeship, but you were doing sort of what took you into the roots, into the bigger firms that you were working for, your traineeship with the slaughters. 

[00:52:36] Julia: Yes. Well, I was asked at Kings if I was interested in the bar because they were quite keen to recommend me to Chambers and things. But by that time I had actually started to do internships with one of the big law firms. In fact, I did it with Howard Chance, one of the predecessors to Clifford Chance, and I applied to a number of law firms and I was actually extremely fortunate because the year I applied was about the first year when those city law firms started to really implement the Sex Discrimination Act, and they'd begun to become worried that their intake was far too skewed towards men, and they actively were recruiting women. Of course I was as well qualified as my male competitors for those jobs, but I do think it was extremely lucky that that was the year when I was applying. 

[00:53:20] Colin: And it was in Slaughter and May you went to.

[00:53:22] Julia: I went to Slaughter And May. I had a number of options. 

[00:53:24] Colin: And also my nephew.

[00:53:26] Julia: Yes. 

[00:53:27] Colin: Was his first, he was a trainee Yeah. Yeah. Jonathan. Yeah. He was Slaughter and May, and he worked his way up and now he's sort of moving around. He's into weird doing actually very well with American film, Cooneys. yes. 

And, he's into this sort of weird. Stuff like all this coin listings and all the rest as well. Anyway, so enjoyable at the Slaughter and May? 

[00:53:47] Julia: I absolutely loved it. I thought it was a wonderful firm. Yes, it was very academic. People were very pleasant. There was a great collegiate spirit there, and I have many friends give back from those days at Slaughter in May.

I think it was a wonderful firm and that, as far as I know, it continues to be. 

[00:54:03] Colin: And what brought you to Hong Kong? How did he get out here and what made all of that?

[00:54:09] Julia: So, I married when I was relatively young by modern standards. I think I'd just turned 22 when I got married and I was just starting what's now a training contract at Slaughter and May just after.

And I was actually the first person at Slaughter and May to have a baby and go back to work afterwards. That's quite amazing, isn't it, when you think of life now. But that was the case in 1984 when my first son was born and I went back to work in 85 and I really enjoyed my training. I enjoyed corporate finance.

And I loved my work. I was traveling a lot, I went a lot to France, a lot to New York at the time on Concord and so on. And my then husband was a barrister. And unfortunately, our marriage broke up within about five years, and I won't go into all the, very upsetting for me detail of some of that. But suffice to say that I decided that a change of air would be a good idea and Slaughter and May were very kind to suggest that I came to their hong Kong office. I did have other options. I could have gone to New York for example, but I was very focused at that time on my two small children, how I would combine being a mother with working and Hong Kong at that time seemed the ideal choice. So I really came to Hong Kong for personal reasons.

And when I arrived, the first deal I worked on was actually a financing and equity financing for Hong Kong and Shanghai hotels. And I had a baptism of fire because I arrived in August 87 and by October 87, of course, we had the huge crash, the black Monday crash with the stock exchange closed and everything else, and we were in the middle of live underwriting agreements.

So you suddenly realize that what you've been working on and sort of filling in as a sort of standard form document up to that point in your career actually live documents and people are looking at how to get out of them, how to cancel them, and so on. Fortunately, that deal was actually rescued and it went through. The following year I worked on the, privatization of Hong Kong Telecom, which was quite an amazing deal as well. So I had some great opportunities early on. And of course being a mother in Hong Kong at that time was absolutely wonderful. At that time in England, the press society generally was a bit negative about working mothers. There's sort of all the ills of society were blamed on working mothers and in Hong Kong it was very much the norm to work. Everybody went back to work when they had children that had any form of career. Our secretaries in our office all had helpers and they were working, and I found that very refreshing and I also found it much easier to be a working mother in Hong Kong because there was so much domestic help.

I had an English nanny at that time for the children, but also, my wonderful Filipino helper who actually stayed with me for 25 years. So I felt very fortunate and because everything is so proximate in Hong Kong, I could pop out to the pediatrician from the office. I could pop out to the school to see the children if I needed to.

Life just became much more manageable at that point.

[00:57:12] Colin: so you then developed, your work, then you then you worked with some other law firms and I'm interested on how Charlton started up.

[00:57:19] Julia: So how I sort of ended up parting company with large law firms was that Slaughter and May were wonderful, but they wanted me to go back to England. That was the career path to be a partner, was to go back to London. Of course, I could have come out to Hong Kong again, but I'd already got all sorts of court permissions to bring the children to Hong Kong, and I didn't want to go back to the UK and possibly disrupt them and then have to go through all of that again.

So I decided to leave Slaughter and May and join another firm who said, oh, we're not like that. We make partners in Hong Kong. Actually, after 18 months they said, oh, we'd like you to go back to London. I then became a partner in a city firm, and then subsequently a partner in another city firm. And I felt that things were going somewhat sideways and I had the opportunity to set up a law firm in Hong Kong with Arthur Anderson, who at that time were expanding their idea of accounting firms having sort of captive law firms or affiliated law firms. 

Because of various legal issues with that, which I wasn't prepared to compromise on. That relationship with the law firm was terminated by Arthur Anderson a couple of years later. It had been a huge success. We'd worked on some massive deals in 97 and in 98 they terminated the arrangement and basically said, well, we'll either pay you all off. And I said, well, I'm actually gonna carry the firm on. So that was a difficult negotiation at the time. And I carried on what was left of that law firm at the time, which became Charltons. And of course, 1998, this is a sort of fast forward from 87.

There was another major crash in late 97 that was the Asian financial crisis. And Hong Kong plunged into recession really from 98 onwards. Which it only came out of really post SARS, after 2003. So it was a very difficult economic climate when I took that firm forward. But I was super fortunate that I ended up working for two years in my life, one of the most interesting projects I've ever worked on, on the restructuring of the Guandong group of companies, which had become insolvent or semi insolvent, and our clients were guandong investment which was a listed company and their three listed subsidiaries, which was the part of the group which the Guandong government wanted to rescue.

And they did that by injecting the Dong Jang Water Project to pay off over 450 creditors. And this all took over two years. I was mainly responsible for all the disclosures on the Hong Kong Exchange advising these listed companies on a day-to-day basis, and also negotiating the listed debt, the bond restructuring.

So that was an amazing career opportunity for my new firm. 

[01:00:00] Colin: And I think my listeners will be very interested. How did learn Mandarin? 

[01:00:04] Julia: I started to go to China in the early nineties and in 1993, I remember this wonderful moment. It was in what used to be the Hilton Hotel, which is no longer there, it was demolished.

There was a large cocktail party for the Hong Kong stock exchange where they announced that they were going to have the first listing of Chinese companies on the Hong Kong market, and there would be nine companies chosen in that batch. And I remember feeling the excitement of that because I thought, wow, this is just the beginning of how much these capital markets are going to grow.

And so I was working from then on on these eight share company listings out of China, which were amazingly interesting because you were privatizing companies, which were completely stay owned, where people didn't even have a concept of what a company was. And actually coming from the northeast of England and socialist as it was when I was growing up, I had huge empathy and understanding of this, because when I first went to university, I had great difficulty understanding what a company was. And when the Thatcher government came in, I really couldn't quite understand how anyone under, other than the government could provide electricity or water. 'cause it just wasn't in my worldview and what I'd grown up with.

And that was very much the mindset in China that we were dealing with when we were privatizing these companies. Of course, China caught up extremely quickly and is now, extremely good at rather capitalistic approaches with very thriving stock exchanges. But that wasn't the case in the early nineties.

So I was plunged into that and I had a wonderful tutor who used to come to my flat at six o'clock in the morning to teach me. He used to teach the children in the afternoons, and I spent a lot of time in meetings and in China, and as I began to understand some Chinese, I realized how bad the translation was, I would say something and the person sitting next to me either didn't understand what I said or wasn't willing to translate it, and that was an enormous impetus to me to actually start to speak myself because, dreadful though my Chinese was, I actually could communicate better what I was trying to say. So that was an amazing time from about 93 really through to the end of 97 when I spent quite a lot of time in China working on these deals. At one point I took my children with me to Hangzhou, all through the summer for about two months when I was working there, and I took them there with, at that point, by that time we actually had a Chinese helper and she came with me and we just stayed in the Shangri La in Hangzhou for two months. Working on a deal. 

[01:02:31] Colin: And that everyone learned 

[01:02:32] Julia: No, no. Well my children did go to Chinese International and they grew up speaking Chinese. 

[01:02:37] Colin: That's very good. Now, running a practice. Yeah. On your own. There are many challenges I faced, myself and Mel, when we formed our firm, what was your biggest challenge of everything?

I mean, You've got great clients, great commercial, but what challenges and stuff? 

[01:02:48] Julia: Well, you've been a great support to me, after our association, Colin, so I should mention that because I think in some ways you're much tougher than me. It's actually a client in China who has this enormous business where I think he has something like 5% of the whole world market for OEM vacuum cleaners or something.

And I said to him, what is your major challenge? And he said, people, and I think that's probably true for law firms as well, because everything to do with law firms is about people. Other things like the premises and so on are really quite straightforward. And in bad markets it's very difficult to maintain morale. And to get work in and so on. 

In good markets, people start to move on, they get better offers. So there's always some new challenge and it's almost always to do with people. And some people say that managing lawyers is like herding cats, and I think that's true.

Oh, I 

[01:03:40] Colin: I agree entirely put all the lawyers from the trainees. It's never easy and you are always having to help assist, try to get the best outta people. It's rather like managing a football team, I suspect. 'cause it is the players in respect to this game. 

Now, like everything in law and all the rest, you always have to be ability to change and to look for the new opportunities for new areas. And we mentioned previously a little bit about cryptocurrency, that area, Bitcoin and all these differences as well. So, at the moment now, just talk to me as to a little bit as to what you're doing with that type of interesting area, which is sort of becoming a very, very important, all over the place here when Trump has his Trump coin as well.

 Are we gonna get paid in Bitcoin, do you think, sooner or later? Is that gonna be the new digital wallets? 

[01:04:26] Julia: Forward I'm not sure if it would be Bitcoin, but I think certainly stable coins, I see a huge amount of transactions going on in stable coins, which are fiat linked digital coins. Is not necessarily issued by governments, but issued by the private sector, and there's gonna be some approved in Hong Kong quite soon.

But of course, USDT issued out of the state. Is becoming really quite a ubiquitous currency. I've seen it on transactions between Hong Kong and Africa recently, where all the payments are being made in USDT because it bypasses, in particular the African banking system. And it's an incredibly efficient way of making payment.

And if you look at what's happening in the US under the Genius Act and the state level laws which are being introduced in relation to approving stable coins. It really seems that the US is going to go big time into stable coin and it will be a sort of survival of the fittest regime, it appears. And I could quite well see that within two to three years, a majority of trade payments within the US will be made in stable coin, I would think.

Not through the banking systems, of course. That's a bit of a bold prediction. But I do see that as the direction that things are going.

[01:05:43] Colin: So linking that into other work, which you do, you've got securities and futures commission, the stock exchange listings, how are they all reacting to that?

'cause, you've had a great lot of experience sitting on committees and all the rest and that right now our financial secretary, they're trying to say, look, we have to move to the times, we gotta sort of adjust, et cetera to ensure that the new markets whether these new products are gonna come into Hong 

[01:06:07] Julia: Kong, 

 Well, the fact is that a lot of these products were here for a long time, and they weren't specifically regulated because actually a lot of existing law and regulation can cover digital assets to a large extent. But Hong Kong took a very sort of wait and see approach on this, and did not enact enabling legislation or any legislation which specifically targeted this digital asset sector for a very long time, and it wasn't until there was a number of sort of regulatory pronouncements by the SFC about this, there was some warning letters sent and so on, but there was no enabling legislation unlike Singapore, where there was enabling legislation. And in mid 2023 there was new legislation introduced under the anti-money laundering ordinance of a regime to license virtual asset service providers, but at that time, only exchanges. Now, back then there was probably at least 30 virtual asset exchanges operating in Hong Kong because they weren't actually regulated. Because as long as the virtual asset wasn't under the definition of a security or futures, then it really wasn't, terribly regulated. There might be the odd license, you might need, like a money service operator license, but not very much. So from the middle of 2023 was really when some of the actual specific regulations started. So in many ways, that tightened what the existing situation was in Hong Kong, but also regularized it because a lot of exchanges or service providers want to be regulated.

It makes them more credible for their customers and so on. They don't want to appear to be fly by night. It makes it difficult for them to get bank accounts and so on. So obviously the number of actual exchanges has reduced quite dramatically in Hong Kong. I think there's around about 10 licensed ones, and it's quite restrictive in terms of trading for retail. It has to be the very large crypto, like Bitcoin and so on, that is allowed to be traded. And for other types of products, those can only be traded by professionals. So it's become a relatively controlled market in that area. And we've had the new stable coin law, the HKMA move quite quickly on that, but they've said they're only going to approve a handful of stable coin issuers, whereas apparently there was over 70 expressions of interest, serious expressions of interest from would be issuers of stablecoin in Hong Kong and around about 50 apparently are making applications. So only a handful are gonna be approved. So where are they gonna go? Maybe they'll go and some of them will try and regulate elsewhere. 

[01:08:42] Colin: Now, IPOs that sort of initial public offerings, and for the benefit of our listeners, this is where a firm wishes to go onto the market raise funds, listing of exchange, et cetera, et cetera. What role are you now playing with the IPOs at around this time? How do you see the market? I mean there's lots of things in the press saying Hong Kong is the center of all the biggest listings come here from China as well. 

Your take on that? 

[01:09:08] Julia: Well, that's absolutely true. The biggest listings do tend to come here and certainly in this year, 2025, in the first half we saw the CATLs US dollar, 5.3 billion IPO and some other very big IPOs.

There was Hung Ray Pharma, San Juan intelligent controls. And Haichen Flavoring. And those were all very large and that made Hong Kong the world's best performer for new IPOs in the first half of this year, which is obviously very different from the previous two years when we were somewhat in the doldrums.

But I think this is very much China companies listing in Hong Kong. Large Chinese companies are very welcome here. And that is a trend which I think will continue and of course should continue. However, I find it disappointing the lack of emphasis on the Hong Kong local market, the Gem, our second board in Hong Kong has had about two or three listings in the last five years, now that previously had at least 80 to a hundred listings a year.

So it's become very difficult for local corporate finance because the smaller companies have not been particularly encouraged or welcomed. To raise public capital in Hong Kong. And I do think that is not good for Hong Kong's overall economy, not to be actually able to fund and finance smaller businesses, some of which not all, of course, will be the large businesses of the future and some of the innovative businesses of the future.

And I think it's a great shame with the benefit of hindsight that the second board gem. It wasn't set up in competition with the main stock exchange. Rather, like the New York Exchange and NASDAQ are in competition with each other. 

And NASDAQ has really thrived, and I don't see any reason why GEM could not have been similar to nasdaq because that really was the concept when it was set up 25 years ago.

But it was increasingly regulated and regulated to the point when it had become almost a listing board for SME companies and now it's so difficult to list there and it's become Almost moribund in terms of new listings that it no longer is an attractive venue for listing. So I think we're missing out a lot and that whole, sector of the market for Hong Kong professionals, Hong Kong corporate finance professionals, that's investment bankers and the whole gamut of services that go with that. 'cause it's a great shame not to promote the great talent in that sector, which exists in Hong Kong. And in the last year or so, at least 60 to 80 smaller Hong Kong and Chinese companies have actually listed on nasdaq, despite the geopolitical issues between.

China and the US, they've gone to the US to list because that's the only place where they can list and raise capital. Yeah. 

[01:11:58] Colin: And also, I mean, again, some of the smaller companies are very small, have the exchange and the SFC have been trying to get them delisted and, and many of them have tried to get advice to, actually, we did something here for can they judicially review? Very very difficult. if not impossible. Really, you say to them, look, you wait. If you wanna throw some money at some lawyers and some Barriters good luck to you as well. So is it really the fact that the regulators here perhaps will be taking, it's very, if you're massive, massive big, corporate China vehicle seems to be great, but it seems as if is one sets of regulations for one and not one for the other, or, have I got it wrong?

[01:12:38] Julia: I think you're right. Yes. And basically there's not much money in it for the exchange because a lot of the exchanges income comes from trading income. And smaller companies, by definition in most markets, don't trade very much. They list for other reasons.

Maybe succession or some kind of liquidity profile to help them to grow, to help them, perhaps to raise new capital in the future. if their business is growing successfully. But they're not stocks which are going to trade the way HSBC is going to trade, for example.

[01:13:11] Colin: Yeah. So there's plenty of opportunities for hopefully that moving forward that there may be a change in the scenery to enable that these people to try to go forward into their listings on a secondary market, or you think that's probably gonna be difficult.

[01:13:27] Julia: I don't see that on the horizon in Hong Kong. I don't see it in any of the proposals at the moment. 

[01:13:31] Colin: Anyway aside from all your law firm work and regulatory work, you've also found time, I dunno, where you get all this time to set out the commonwealth chambers of commerce. That's the commonwealth. Now can you just give us a bird's eye view, A. Why you've got interest in now? I've been along and met them all And what's happening with that. 

Sure. 

[01:13:50] Julia: And 

[01:13:50] Colin: the background because I find that very interesting.

[01:13:52] Julia: Sure. So for Bird's eye view of the Commonwealth is it's 56 countries and about 20 other dependent territories, plus a few other actually on top of that territories in the world, which most of them, vast majority, have some kind of affiliation with the former British Empire and it's a completely voluntary organization to join. I think about 15 of the countries still recognize the British monarchy, but the rest don't, they're republics. And some countries recently who had nothing to do with the British Empire or the Commonwealth previously have chosen to join the Commonwealth. Like Rwanda, like Togo, like Gabon.

They've just joined because they think it's a good idea. Some of those Francophone African countries. And, there is some business school research which says that trading among commonwealth countries, because of their similarities of legal systems, education, some use of English usually and general cultural backgrounds.

There's a 20% cost advantage in trading amongst commonwealth countries. And I was looking at all of this and I was thinking, gosh, how many Commonwealth countries have got Chambers of Commerce in Hong Kong? And the answer was, at that time around nine, I thought, well, there's 56 countries. That's an awful lot of countries that aren't represented.

So the Commonwealth Chamber is really to cover a lot of those countries, and there's two chambers because one is a Hong Kong based chamber, which has more Hong Kong focused events, and for the Commonwealth in Hong Kong. And an international one, which we have a lot of online events. Talking, for example, to young people in India, Bangladesh, Africa, about some of the exciting and interesting business projects that they're working on and starting businesses.

This chambers is not focused on big business. It's trying to focus on younger people, more exciting stories and encourage everybody to actually take advantage of the Commonwealth because I think it isn't promoted enough in terms of the business advantages that it can bring.

[01:15:55] Colin: I mean, it's huge. Not too long ago, I was in Tokyo for the world Athletics Championships, Botswana, Jamaica, all the Commonwealth countries were winning everything. I mean, better than the Americans but for you is Hong Kong, and the Commonwealth, are people interested in joining, in engaging. 

[01:16:14] Julia: They, are, they are. Because first of all, there's a lot of Commonwealth people in Hong Kong from all over the place, and not all of them are represented by their own chambers of commerce.

And of course, even when they are, they still may be interested in the Commonwealth. So I think that's important. But they're also interested in Hong Kong. Just generally there's a lot of interest because Hong Kong still has an awful lot of institutions that are very similar to. The institutions in many commonwealth countries, the legal system, for example, a lot of the regulatory bodies, the sort of committee systems that we have for the stock exchange, the SFC and so on, and some of the other bodies, which I know you've been a member of.

I mean, those are all really quite reminiscent of the remnants of what was left behind in terms of the structure of organization, of business and society.

[01:17:02] Colin: Yep. Very interesting and I do enjoy it and I do go along to some of the meetings greater Bay Area, Hong Kong's role is talked about a lot. I've got my special card now. You presume it travel. Amazing 

[01:17:14] Julia: It's amazing.

[01:17:15] Colin: I go to the border and I say, I'm chinese. Like it's like a home return permit. It's brilliant. That's the best thing that's ever happened. And you don't need your passport to go into China as well. But The Greater Bay Area, now I'm at weekends, I'm forced by my daughter and grandpa, we go over 'cause she thinks it's better service and cheaper food. Your view on the Greater bay area, I mean 90 million people on our border 

[01:17:37] Julia: Well, it's a massive, massive powerhouse. It certainly is. And larger than Germany, it has a huge economy. So, obviously it's gonna be an increasingly important industrial power. And to go back to that GBA card.

It is wonderful. 'cause the other day I was going to a meeting actually in Guizhou and I got a direct train from Hong Kong, got on it with my GBA card and get off in Guizhou and come back a few days later from a different city on a direct train in Guizhou. It's quite amazing how much infrastructure development has gone on and how much has been invested in that. 

[01:18:13] Colin: And is Hong Kong going to be the market for them to come and engage with, list with, be part of, will this going to help enhance Hong Kong's economics?

Everyone says it is, and I can see why. But are we taking advantage of it? 

[01:18:27] Julia: Well, I've already mentioned, I think in certainly the domestic area and smaller listings both from Hong Kong and China. I think an awful lot more could be done in Hong Kong for that. Having said that, Hong Kong remains the gateway major gateway to international capital for Chinese businesses.

So I think that will continue to thrive as a role. And the Hong Kong government itself has got some interesting priorities. One is to be the world's largest. Wealth management hub. At the moment, someone from government was telling me that Hong Kong is number two to Switzerland now. So that's obviously a major focus.

Wealth management and asset management, those are very major focuses for the Hong Kong government in terms of growing the financial services sector. So I think those are the areas within finance as well as the IPO side, which are likely to be the big focus of growth.

[01:19:22] Colin: Yeah, I do agree with that. I'm noticing more and more family coming here. They feel Hong Kong has low tax, relatively the banks here are very reasonable banking system as well.

An opportunity to sort of. Base themselves here. And of course there's lots of efforts whereby the government's looking to the Middle East, to Saudi Qatar as well to sort of generate more work and getting people coming here to invest as well. Practice at the moment. Busy.

[01:19:51] Julia: It's reasonable. Reasonable. I'm also doing increasing amounts of Cayman work, so I've spent a lot of time in Cayman.

[01:19:57] Colin: that's for our listeners again, is the Cayman Islands. It's just not about an hour's flight from Miami. Yeah. Let's explain as, as to relationship between Caymans and Hong Kong.

[01:20:08] Julia: Well, it's a massive relationship actually, because around 60% of companies listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange are actually incorporated in Cayman, which is quite unbelievable. I think 18% from Bermuda. So there is a massive demand for Cayman legal services in Asia, and particularly in Hong Kong. There's also a lot of Cayman funds set up from here.

I mean, Hong Kong has got quite an efficient funds law, but it wasn't introduced till five or six years ago. So Cayman had already really had a head start on that and is a very viable jurisdiction for investment funds. We are beginning to see some re-domicile now. We have a new domicile law that you can re-domicile a company to Hong Kong.

We're beginning to see some of that. So I've done BVI Re-Domiciles. Cayman Re-Domiciles about to start on the Cyprus Re-Domicile for example. So I dunno to what extent that will become a really major factor, but I am beginning to see that happen. 

[01:21:02] Colin: That's good. You're so busy, you sit on lots of committees, you're doing everything. Do you have ever time to relax? I know you walk a lot in the country parks as well, and you're very attuned to the making our environment as well.

So when you don't look at the law, how do you relax? 

[01:21:18] Julia: Well, I have four grownup children and... 

[01:21:20] Colin: That's not relaxing. Four grownup children cannot be that they want it. 

[01:21:24] Julia: Well, they're a great joy to me. 

[01:21:26] Colin: Yeah, and a grandchild. 

[01:21:27] Julia: two grandchildren. 

[01:21:28] Colin: I've got one. You are ahead of the game. I'm trying to bribe my daughter, but it's not working. 

[01:21:32] Julia: So my children are wonderful. I Spend a lot of time in the country park at the weekends. I love hiking, as you've mentioned. I have dogs as well as cats. So I love animals that grew up with animals and continue to spend time with animals. I've started to work on a book actually on stoicism and Christianity, so I dunno where I'll get to with that, but that's something else I've been doing in my spare time. 

[01:21:54] Colin: That sounds a separate podcast with a separate topic once that book got gets published and we'll do. Julia, it's been a great pleasure talking to you on Law & More. Thank you for giving up your very busy time to have a little chat with me. 

[01:22:08] Julia: Thank you so much Colin. 

[01:22:09] Colin: Thank you.