Joseph Yam Chi Kwong GBM GBS CBE JP
任志剛
Class of 1967, Form 7 - Analytical Economist
1967屆, 預科畢業 — 金融謀略大帥
Joseph Yam studied sixth form at St. Paul’s College from 1965 to 1967. A statistician and economist, Yam joined the civil service in 1971 and was appointed deputy secretary for monetary affairs by 1985. In 1993, he became the first chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s central bank, a position he held until his retirement in 2009. He has been sitting on the Executive Council since 2017.
Across his career, Yam presided over many ups and downs in Hong Kong’s financial history: multiple crashes throughout the 1980s, the Hong Kong dollar entering a peg with the US dollar in 1983, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the dot-com bubble, the 2008 crash — all while maintaining Hong Kong’s position as an international financial hub. Former chief executive Donald Tsang once described Yam as a ‘comrade-in-arms’. He received the CBE in 1995 and the GBM in 2009.
Within two years, St. Paul’s had left a lasting impact on Yam. He was an active chorister, and had been honorary secretary of the Fencing Club. Yam remembers seeing his peers already decided on their future paths; it was under this atmosphere that he chose to devote his life towards bettering society.