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The 2015 Fintech Finance 35: Janos Barberis, FinTech Hong Kong

No. 35

35
Janos Barberis
Chief Executive Officer
FinTech Hong Kong

Undeniably a world financial capital, Hong Kong currently ranks behind only London and New York, and just ahead of Singapore, in consulting firm Z/Yen Group’s Global Financial Centres Index. Janos Barberis believes Hong Kong should have that kind of stature in fintech as well. Evangelizing on the territory’s behalf as founder and CEO of the FinTech Hong Kong ecosystem, he concedes that “the U.S. and EU are leading the race in terms of the amount of money invested.” However, the 27-year-old asserts, “Asia, and in particular China, offers market opportunities on a scale that is not remotely comparable to Europe or the U.S.” Where better than Hong Kong to see, as Barberis contends, that “China is already leading innovation in the fintech space, trialing technology and services at a pace that the West cannot match”? He arrived in Hong Kong from the U.K. in 2012 for the master’s in law program at the University of Hong Kong, where he wrote a thesis on how peer-to-peer lending would eventually displace China’s shadow banking sector. After a brief stint in London helping to obtain a license for “challenger bank” Lintel Financial Services, Barberis returned to launch the web-based “single point of access for Hong Kong’s fintech scene” in 2014. “Witnessing the fintech activity in London, I realized that Hong Kong had not only the same prerequisites to be a fintech hub, but, importantly, it has much more market opportunity regionally,” says Barberis, who is also co-editor of The FinTech Book, a globally crowdsourced compendium that will be released in January. As of mid-October the FinTech Hong Kong portal listed 619 members (categorized as influencers, mentors and enthusiasts), 51 start-ups and 52 events. In a sign of the venture's spreading influence, its web platform has been white-labeled for organizers of emerging ecosystems in Beijing, Dubai, London, Shanghai, Singapore and Toronto, and Barberis recently founded the SuperCharger, an accelerator program backed by Internet giant Baidu and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.


The 2015 Fintech Finance 35

1. James Robinson III
& James Robinson IV
RRE Ventures
2. Jane Gladstone
Evercore Partners
3. Matthew Harris
Bain Capital Ventures
4. Steven McLaughlin
Financial Technology Partners
5. Jonathan Korngold
General Atlantic
6. Richard Garman &
Brad Bernstein
FTV Capital
7. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park
Anthemis Group
8. Thomas Jessop
Goldman Sachs Group
9. Meyer (Micky) Malka
Ribbit Capital
10. Hans Morris
Nyca Partners
11. Maria Gotsch
Partnership Fund for New York City
12. Marc Andreessen
Andreessen Horowitz
13. Barry Silbert
Digital Currency Group
14. Jay Reinemann
Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria
15. Mariano Belinky
Santander InnoVentures
16. François Robinet
AXA Strategic Ventures
17. Vanessa Colella
Citi Ventures
18. Alan Freudenstein & Gregory Grimaldi
Credit Suisse
NEXT Fund
19. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena
SenaHill Partners
20. Rodger Voorhies
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
21. Michael Schlein
Accion International
22. Kenneth Marlin
Marlin & Associates
23. Rumi Morales
CME Ventures
24. Mark Beeston
Illuminate Financial Management
25. Vladislav Solodkiy
Life.SREDA
26. Fabian Vandenreydt
Innotribe SWIFT
27. Derek White
Barclays
28. Alex Batlin
UBS
29. Jeffrey Greenberg
& Vincenzo
La Ruffa
Aquiline Capital Partners
30. P. Howard Edelstein
REDI Holdings
31. Nektarios Liolios
Startupbootcamp FinTech
32. Roy Bahat
Bloomberg Beta
33. Andrew McCormack
Valar Ventures
34. Lawrence Wintermeyer
Innovate Finance
35. Janos Barberis
FinTech Hong Kong

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