Keynote Speaker No.1: Prof. Giovanni Urga

Prof. Giovanni Urga is Professor of Econometrics and Finance at Bayes Business School (City St George’s, University of London) and Director of the Centre for Econometric Analysis (CEA). He is also Visiting Professor at Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas (CRED), Senior Fellow at the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis (RCEA), and a member of the panel for the Philip Leverhulme Prizes in Economics and ESRC Peer Review College.
He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford and has held previous academic positions at London Business School, Queen Mary University of London, and the New Economic School in Moscow, as well as a long-standing appointment at the University of Bergamo in Italy from 1992 to 2024, when he resigned.
Professor Urga serves as Associate Editor of Empirical Economics and has acted as guest editor for the Journal of Econometrics and the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. He is a frequent referee for top journals, including Econometrica, Journal Econometrics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Banking and Finance.
Through his role at CEA, he has developed an extensive international research network and organised major conferences and workshops, contributing to the global advancement of econometric research.

Keynote Speaker No.2: Mr. Soo Hoo Khoon Yean
Managing Partner, PwC Malaysia; Deputy President of Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Mr Khoon Yean has over 30 years experience in providing audit and business advisory services to a wide range of financial services clients in Singapore and Malaysia. Whilst in Singapore, in addition to normal statutory audit, he was also part of his firm’s Computer Risk Management Team. His duties included computer systems audit, mainly on IBM AS 400 and UNIX hardware platforms. His portfolio of clients in Singapore included international merchant banks, offshore banks, stockbroking institutions, leasing companies and commodity futures traders..