Club Lunch: Brexit: Triumph or Trainwreck?

The UK’s narrow vote in favour of leaving the European Union has thrown British and European politics into turmoil and has important implications for the international trade and finance that are so important to Hong Kong. The FCC is pleased to present a lively debate on the big questions surrounding Brexit. Is there a chance that this momentous decision will be reversed? If it goes ahead, will Brexit be “hard” or “soft”, and how long will the final split be delayed? What will the impact be for banks and bankers? Will thousands move to Frankfurt or Dublin or Amsterdam? What will the trading partners of the UK and the EU, including China and India and south-east Asia, do in response to Brexit? Will Jeremy Corbyn and Labour win the next UK election and what would the effects be?

Anatole Kaletsky, who argues that Brexit would be economically damaging for the UK, is co-chairman and chief economist of Gavekal Dragonomics, the consulting and asset management company based in Hong Kong and Beijing. He was the first chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking from 2010 to 2015 and worked for 30 years as an economic journalist and columnist for publications including the Financial Times and New York Times.

Timothy Beardson, who argues in favour of Brexit, owned Crosby Financial Holdings, the largest independent investment bank in Asia. He founded Crosby in 1984 and sold it in the late 1990s. His book Stumbling Giant: The Threats to China’s Future was published by Yale in 2013. Beardson, who has lived in Hong Kong for almost 40 years, is now chairman of Bixmoor, an Asian research business that works for governments, multinationals and financial institutions.