FTSE Russell's Jessie Pak receives Executive of the Year win in Financial Services category

The managing director focused on achieving 3 milestones for the company amidst the crisis.

FTSE Russell’s Managing Director and London Stock Exchange Group’s Head of Information Services, Asia Pacific Jessie Pak clinched the Executive of the Year win in the Financial Services category at the recently concluded HKB Management Excellence Awards 2020. Now in its 3rd year, the awards event lauds individuals, innovators and teams whose initiatives have brought tangible business gains for the success of their companies.

Since 2015, Jessie has led FTSE Russell’s Asia Pacific team to develop and implement strategies for the region, covering client relationships and partnerships, product management and regulatory activities across three core business lines – index, analytics and data solutions. This year, Jessie also took on additional responsibility as LSEG’s Global Head of Sales, Information Services.

Jessie plays a pivotal role in driving the growth of Asia business with significant impact locally and globally. FTSE Russell focuses on 3 milestones achieved under Jessie’s leadership, namely China A shares inclusion to FTSE Global Equity Index Series (GEIS), scheduled China bond inclusion to FTSE World Government Bond Index (WGBI), and the derivatives markets development.

The final tranche of the China A shares inclusion to GEIS in June 2020 concluded multi years’ efforts on phase 1 inclusion. The first phase, which was implemented across multiple tranches commencing in June 2019, added 25% of the investable market cap of 1,051 small, medium, and large cap China A Shares to the FTSE Emerging All Cap Index. FTSE Russell is the first international index provider to include all three company size segments of China companies within their index. The overall projected passive inflow is $10b upon the completion of phase 1 inclusion.

By working with regulators, exchanges, asset managers and market participants, Jessie has enabled a seamless process throughout the phased inclusion of the China A shares into the FTSE Russell global equity benchmarks. She will continue to work with key stakeholders to assess the timetable for future phases of A Share inclusion alongside the internationalization of the Chinese market.

In addition, FTSE Russell announced the scheduled inclusion of Chinese Government Bonds in the FTSE World Government Bond Index (WGBI) from October 2021 subject to a further confirmation in March 2021 with an estimated weight of 6.14% as of end of November. The bond inclusion has attracted wide media coverage globally and locally with Jessie speaking in the live interview in CNBC, iCable Finance and newspaper interview in the prominent Chinese media in China.

FTSE Russell was also selected by CSOP Asset Management, one of China's largest and most established offshore asset managers, as the index provider for its Chinese Government Bond Index ETF. The listing is the first ETF to track a China onshore bond index in Singapore and has attracted strong interest with initial seed funding confirmed at US$676m, growing to US$1.1billion AUM in two months.

Further, FTSE Russell entered into a partnership with Singapore Exchange (SGX) this year to develop a comprehensive Asian and Emerging Markets focused, multi-asset index derivatives offering. This long-term strategic partnership supports growing demand across Asia for index-based listed derivatives, including in sustainable investment.

A highlight of this partnership is the SGX FTSE Taiwan Index Futures contract, the fast-growing equity derivatives products on SGX. Since its introduction in July this year, the contract has established itself as the world’s leading offshore Taiwan equity index price return futures, with open interest at US$5 billion and average daily turnover of US$2.1 million.

Despite 2020 being a challenging year characterized by the pandemic, the financial and operational performance in H1 has been sound across London Stock Exchange Group and FTSE Russell. In H1, LSEG’s total income rose 8% to £1,235m; FTSE Russell’s revenue was up 5% to £330m compared to £315m in H1 2019.