Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
David Webb, an activist investor and advocate for corporate governance reform in Hong Kong that made him a gadfly to the city’s financial establishment, has died.
His death, from prostate cancer, was announced on his social media account on Tuesday night. He was 60.
Webb, who was born in the UK, moved to Hong Kong in 1991 as an investment banking director for BZW Asia, a subsidiary of Barclays. He was later an in-house adviser to Wheelock and Wharf Group, a local conglomerate.
In 1998, he founded webb-site.com, where he collected public records about Hong Kong companies and individuals and promoted transparency in the territory’s byzantine small- and mid-cap stock market. The website, which he maintained on a non-profit basis, became an unparalleled resource for Hong Kong’s financial sector and media.
In 2017, Webb published what he called the “Enigma Network”, a web of 50 Hong Kong-listed companies with extensive cross-shareholdings and what he argued were inflated valuations. Within a month, shares of some of the companies had fallen by as much as 90 per cent.
“He didn’t try to be everybody’s best friend but he was an amazing gadfly for Hong Kong,” said Andrew Riddick, a former salesman and director at CLSA.
“Fund managers were always very happy to meet him,” said Riddick. “They would never stick their own heads above the parapet but David did that for them.”
Webb’s most enduring and significant contribution to Hong Kong was the extensive record of directors, Securities and Futures Commission licence holders and other financial information that he made freely available.
The archive became a vital source of information on listed companies and their employees for journalists, investors and members of civil society, and had no equivalent in financial centres such as New York or London.
“David’s database of directors was invaluable to all those in the stewardship community,” said Amar Gill, secretary-general of the Asia Corporate Governance Association.
“The painstaking research he provided on the overall market in Hong Kong had no real parallel and did lead to positive change, including HKEX limiting the number of boards and tenure for independent directors effective just last year.”
Webb served as a non-executive director at Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing between 2003 and 2008 and also served as an SFC panel member for 24 years. He resigned from HKEX in a letter in which he levelled his characteristically frank criticism at one of Hong Kong’s central institutions, which he had frequently excoriated both for its for-profit status and close associations with the government.
HKEX and the SFC released condolence statements on Webb’s death, recognising his contributions to Hong Kong’s financial markets.
Webb’s appetite for conducting meticulous research into Hong Kong’s hidden recesses went beyond financial markets. In 2018, he revealed that the US consulate in the city held a 999-year lease, which he said made it likely the longest leasehold in China.
In 2020, Webb disclosed that he had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. In February last year, he wrote that he had only a few months to live, and shut down webb-site at the end of October, though the archive remains available online. He continued writing on Substack until last month.
In June, he was made an MBE for his efforts to raise standards of corporate governance in Hong Kong.
In his final post to webb-site, he wrote: “After my loving family, running webb-site.com and campaigning for the public interest in corporate and economic governance since 1998 has been the joy of my life, far exceeding the satisfaction of just beating the market with my investments.”
