Kerry Holdings Professorship in Law

Cryptocurrency Bitcoin made headlines around the world across last year as it surged from less than US$1,000 to over US$20,000 in less than one year, before crashing in January 2018. Its massive surge and price volatility raises many concerns, with many banking and government officials warning investors not to trust it and that it is a bubble waiting to burst.

While Bitcoin’s meteoric rise grabbed the headlines, it also put the spotlight on Financial Technology (FinTech). Today’s FinTech is the result of a long evolutionary interaction between finance, technology and regulation, which is transforming finance around the world, particularly in China. Increasingly, it represents technologies and technological innovation in the financial sector that are disrupting traditional financial services, including mobile payments, money transfers, loans, fundraising, and cryptocurrencies.

Professor Douglas Arner is the Kerry Holdings Professor in Law at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is the founding Director of the University’s LLM in Corporate and Financial Law and LLM in Compliance and Regulation programmes. He specialises in economic and financial law, and regulation and development, and is recognised for his work in FinTech and financial regulation, particularly in the context of Regulatory Technology (RegTech).

He is the Project Co-ordinator of a HK$15.36 million five-year project on “Enhancing Hong Kong’s Future as a Leading International Financial Centre” funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Theme-based Research Scheme. He is also a member of the Hong Kong Financial Services Development Council, the Executive Committee of the Asia Pacific Structured Finance Association, and the Advisory Board of SuperCharger FinTech Accelerator.

After graduating with a BA from Drury College and a JD from Southern Methodist University, Professor Arner continued his studies at the University of London where he earned an LLM and a PhD. Prior to joining HKU in 2000, he was the Sir John Lubbock Support Fund Fellow at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London.

Professor Arner served as Head of the Department of Law at HKU (2011-14) and as Co-Director of the Duke University-HKU Asia-America Institute in Transnational Law (2005-16). During this time, he managed 70 full-time academic staff at HKU and was responsible for over 1,500 students. He also taught postgraduate teaching programmes, undertook a major reform of the curriculum, and oversaw a significant expansion in student and staff numbers.

He co-founded the Faculty’s Asian Institute of International Financial Law in 1999 and served as its Director in 2006-11. The Institute is considered today the leading academic research institute focusing on international financial law, regulation and policy in Asia. In 2007, he received HKU’s Outstanding Young Researcher Award.

The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), among others, have invited Professor Arner to serve as a consultant. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at numerous overseas universities, including the University of Melbourne where he is a Senior Fellow. More recently, he was the Ken Yun Visiting Professor at Duke University in 2017 and the Peter Ellinger Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore in 2016.

He is author, co-author or editor of 15 books, and the author or co-author of more than 120 articles, chapters and reports on related subjects. His most recent books include Reconceptualizing Global Finance and its Regulation (Cambridge University Press 2016) and Financial Regulation in Hong Kong (Oxford University Press 2016).

His recent papers are available at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) where he is among the top 1% of all authors by downloads and one of the top 25 law authors in the world.