Asian Development Bank

Daniel Wiedmer is an Investment Officer at the Asian Development Bank. He is responsible for executing private equity investments, both directly in companies in the financial sector and through private equity investment funds. ADBa s private equity portfolio includes 35 funds and commitments in excess of USD 500 million dedicated exclusively to Asian emerging markets. He previously worked for SECO, Switzerland, where he made investments in private equity funds and financial institutions in Indonesia and Africa. He has represented investorsa interests on boards and advisory committees of various private equity funds in emerging markets. Prior to joining SECO, he worked for AXA Group. He received a Master of Science in Development Management from the London School of Economics and an MBA, with distinction, from the University of Kent.

Fred Yoshino, PhD is an international consultant par-excellence whose forte includes global business strategies, outsourcing, re-engineering and others. Dr. Yoshino got his Doctor of Business Administration from Pacific Western University, Master of Public Administration from Harvard University and Bachelor of Arts in Law and Political Science from Keio University. Among others, Dr. Yoshino serves as consultant at the Asian Development Bank, economic commentator and newscaster for WINS Channel, columnist for Business Daily, and concurrently a professor at the Graduate School of Business of De La Salle University. He is an articulate English speaker and has been residing in the Philippines for the last 16 years.

Hamid Sharif is a UK-qualified barrister of Lincoln's Inn, with a Master in Laws from Cambridge University. Mr Sharif is currently Assistant General Counsel at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). He heads the Special Practice Group on Law and Policy Reform which is responsible for many regional initiatives, including the ADB's regional initiatives on insolvency and secured transactions. As Assistant General Counsel, he also works on South Asia, leading a team of lawyers drawn from several countries including Bangladesh, Belgium, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore, Pakistan and the United States. Prior to joining the ADB, Mr Sharif was a partner with a leading Pakistan law firm in Lahore. His areas of practice included banking and corporate law, privatisation and limited recourse financing of infrastructure projects.

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John is Principal Consultant to the Financial Consulting Group of Oakbridge Limited, a group dedicated to the provision factual information in the context of professional financial markets consulting and training programs. He holds a First Class Honours degree in Economics from the University of Sydney and has worked with the Reserve Bank of Australia, a major mining and industrial group, the Australian arm of Bank of America, and a then international Big Five consultancy practice. He has conducted foreign exchange risk policy workshops in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and the United States. John has been a financial training consultant to the Securities Institute of Australia, a course presenter for CPA Australia and a technical contributor to the New York publication International Treasurer. In his work in New Zealand, John has presented foreign exchange workshops for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and has been a course presenter for the Institute of Chartered Accountants. John is a recognised technical assistance expert with the Monetary and Financial Systems Department of the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC and a Consultant to the Asian Development Bank in Manila. He is a member of the Professional Risk Managers International Association (PRMIA). He has also provided advice as a recognised expert to the legal profession in both Australia and New Zealand in cases requiring foreign exchange expertise, giving expert evidence in court proceedings when required. His evidentiary work in a particular case has been reviewed by the Privy Council in London. John is widely acclaimed for his technical knowledge of financial markets. His strengths lie in verbal, written and presentation skills that clarify technical concepts and practices too often confused by jargon and mystique. John provides Kennington with expertise in interest rate, exchange rate, equities and commodity price risk management policy. He can be contacted at jrrush@thekenningtonalliance.com jrrush@thekenningtonalliance.

Mr. Lufkin is a pioneering entrepreneur in international corporate governance - from the institutional investors' perspective. Shifting to capital markets after post-graduate stints with auctioneers Sotheby's and Christie's in London and New York, he was founder and managing director of an international asset management subsidiary of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank based in New York, and Chairman of Intercurrency Fund Ltd, it's flagship multicurrency money market fund in the early 1980's. Leaving HSBC to start his own business, he spent several years running private equity and venture capital investments, as well as risk arbitrage in listed firms' stocks, in the US and the UK. After selling that firm, he became active in 'buy side' corporate governance as one of the first officers of United Shareholders Association in the US, reporting to T. Boone Pickens. Taking this into the international arena, as US institutional portfolios began to globalize in the late 1980's, he founded Global Proxy Services Corporation GPSC. GPSC rapidly became the preeminent representative and corporate proxy of major US and international institutional investors, including CalPERS, J P Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of Ireland, Citibank, State Street, Cedel Bank, and more than 1,000 other major banks, pension funds, insurers, and other institutions, exercising voting rights over more than $US 200BN in corporate equities and advising the world's leading investors on matters of international corporate governance. He sold GPSC in 1997 to ADP, a Fortune 100 corporation, since when he has been active as a successful private investor in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines. He is the author of the groundbreaking book International Corporate Governance (Euromoney, London, 1991) and many articles on corporate governance published in Global Investor, Global Custodian, Investor Relations, etc. A Yale graduate, Mr Lufkin has been a fellow of the Institute of Directors, London, and member of other professional associations. His work in corporate governance during the last decade was been covered extensively by magazines, newspapers and TV in the US, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, Korea, Holland, Belgium, and other countries. He is a consultant to the Asian Development Bank, and other financial institutions and corporations.

Steve Pollard is a Principal Economist with the Asian Development Bank's Pacific Department. A UK and Australian national, Mr. Pollard joined ADB in 1996 as a Project Economist in what was then known as the Office of Pacific Operations. He worked for the Poverty Unit of ADB's Strategy and Policy Department from 2000 to 2001, but apart from that period he has always worked with ADB's Pacific Department. Working for ADB's Pacific Department, Mr. Pollard has been responsible for designing and managing ADB projects throughout the Pacific region. He has been desk officer, producing country strategies and programs for the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji Islands, and now the Republic of the Marshall Islands. He designed and managed all of ADB's recent work on poverty in the Pacific. He has also worked as desk economist. He now supports the work of the Director General of the Pacific Department. Mr. Pollard began his career with the World Bank in Malawi, Africa. He has over 33 years' experience as a practicing development economist, including 23 years' working in the Pacific islands. He has worked in over 30 developing countries, including living and working in Malawi and Kenya, in Africa and in Kiribati in the Pacific. Prior to joining ADB, Mr. Pollard worked as an academic, including as a Research Fellow with the Pacific Islands Development Program of the East West Center in Hawaii. He was a director of a private company in Australia that provided consultancy, training, and recruitment services in Asia and the Pacific. He has worked for governments of developing countries, for research organizations, and as a private consultant. Mr. Pollard holds a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from the University of Lancaster (UK) and a Masters degree with distinction in Agricultural Economics from the University of Leeds (UK).

An Economics Graduate from Columbia University, New York, Mr. Singh has implemented dozens of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects successfully. He was part of the team which developed Model Concession Agreement for Road Sector. Mr. Singh has also worked with Asian Development Bank (ADB) as a consultant in Colombo for four years. Currently, Mr. Singh is the Chairman of SANHAR Renewable Energy. His interest is to energize the MSW management sector which is at a very nascent stage in India. He strongly feels that Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) provide a useful implementation mechanism.