Wong Joo Seng
Chairman & Special Advisor

WONG, Joo Seng is the Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of G K Goh Financial Services (S) Private Ltd., a member firm of the Singapore Exchange - Derivatives Trading ("SGX-DT"). G K Goh Financial Services (S) Private Ltd. is the wholly owned securities & derivative brokerage and foreign exchange trading subsidiary of G K Goh Holdings Ltd; a listed company based in Singapore. He joined in 1998 as its CEO and was instrumental in the start-up of the unit.

Joo Seng started his career in 1987 in United Overseas Bank Singapore. There he was dealing in precious metals as a trader in Gold, Silver and Platinum over-the-counter Spot, Forwards and Options as well as exchange traded Futures and Options.

Thereafter he joined Republic National Bank of New York, Singapore, now part of the HSBC Banking Group, as Vice President - Foreign Exchange & Precious Metals Options. At Republic National Bank of New York, he was responsible for interbank price-making and risk management of the bank's foreign exchange and precious metal options portfolio in Asia, as part of a global options risk management team with centers in New York, London and Singapore.

He subsequently joined Bank of New Zealand in Wellington, New Zealand as Manager - Foreign Exchange Options where he was overall in charge of the currency options desk. His responsibilities included the strategic positioning of the bank’s currency options portfolio and all price-making activities to both retail and institutional clients of the bank as well as to the interbank market at large.

He returned to Singapore to take up the position of Head of Treasury at TLB Bullion and Futures, the wholly owned derivative brokerage arm of Tat Lee Bank Singapore, prior to joining G K Goh to start up and run G K Goh Financial Services (S) Private Ltd. in 1998.

Joo Seng holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and Mathematics from the National University of Singapore.

Richard S L Koh FCPA
CEO & Chief Architect

Richard Koh has over 25 years of industry experience in Infocomm, Treasury (Forex) and eCommerce covering the Asia Pacific markets.  Richard is a well sought after public speaker on topics in eCommerce within the Financial Markets, having shared his thoughts in many international conference since he was 17 years of age.

He started his own consultancy practice in 1986 (at the age of 14) and obtained a Price Waterhouse scholarship to pursue Accountancy after having obtained straight distinctions in his pre-university examinations and was the valedictorian for his cohort. He went on to serve his bond with PricewaterhouseCoopers and obtained his Certified Public Accountant qualification, before being headhunted by his then client – Chase Manhattan Bank (eventually merged to become JPMorgan Chase Bank). In the 9-years there, he was responsible for having started the entire Asia Pacific eCommerce function for the Treasury division and left as a senior Vice President/Regional Head of eChannels. The bank as part of its management development program sponsored the Executive MBA.

In 2007, he was again headhunted by Standard Chartered Bank to head-up a newly created senior Director/Regional Head of eSales (Asia), merging the 3 key regional eSales teams (each headed by a Director). In 2008, he was again challenged to create a new global group for its Financial Markets division – primarily to look at solutions and revenue streams that are new-to-the-bank and having longevity. Throughout his career, he has consistently been rated “1” or at the top 5% of his peers.

He was admitted to Mensa International with a score of 156 at the age of 15.

Richard is a Fellow Certified Public Accountant (FCPA)¹ and holds an Executive MBA² in International Business (First in Class/Valedictorian), Graduate Diploma in Techno-entrepreneurship², Graduate Diploma in eCommerce², Bachelor of Accountancy (Honours)³ with specialization in Banking and Finance, Group Diploma in Accounting⁴ (1^st Singapore Gold Medalist) and Diploma in Computer Studies⁵.

¹ Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Singapore   
² Helsinki School of Economics, Finland   
³ Nanyang Technological University, Singapore   
⁴ London Chambers of Commerce, United Kingdom   
⁵ National Computing Centre, UK

Noboru Takahashi
Chief Technology Officer

Noboru Takahashi has over 20 years of Information Technology experience within the banking industry covering end-to-end systems in Foreign Exchange (FX) and eCommerce.  He is a veteran at JPMorgan, having started his career at Chemical Bank in 1991, which merged with Chase Manhattan in 1996 and then with JPMorgan in 2000. He is a senior Vice President and the de facto Chief Technology Officer in JPMorgan Tokyo office.

Throughout his career, Noboru specialised in application development/support, project management, consulting and technology leadership. He is a core member of the technology leadership for the FX business in Asia, contributing to the successful completion of the various business initiatives in the region.

In 1996, he was appointed to be a technical team lead of a system-right-sizing project at Chemical Trust Bank.  This was a 2-year project and a joint effort with Nomura Research and Institute (NRI), replacing a legacy mainframe by a client-server system.  He was responsible for running a 5-member core team for writing/reviewing design documents, managing user testing and implementing end-user-computing to maximize productivities.

Since 1999 he and his team have been in the FX eCommerce space, including the successful deployment of a proprietary platform, system customization and external client consulting in Asia Pacific region.  The recent projects he ran include a number of API integration work for Japanese margin trading brokers as well as Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE). 

Noboru graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University with a Bachelor of Business Management sponsored by Chase Manhattan Bank.

Lee Yaw Chyun CPA
Chief Financial Officer

Yaw Chyun has more than 16 years experience in auditing, accounting, finance, internal control, compliance, risk management, International trade and taxation. He started his career as an Auditor with Ernst & Young (E&Y).  He was with E&Y for 5 years.  Besides Audit assignments, he was the team leader in 2 Main board IPOs, 2 due diligence and acquisitions. 

After E&Y, Yaw Chyun joined ALSTOM (a French engineering firm specializing in Power Generation and Transport, which supplied the Singapore MRT Trains for the Marina Line) in 1999 as a Finance Manager.  In 2003, ALSTOM’s Power Generation Industrial Division was acquired by SIEMENS. 

He was the Finance Director in the new SIEMENS entity and was leading the integration team in Asia Pacific Region.   In 2004, Yaw Chyun was seconded to SIEMENS LLC (UAE) to take up the assignment of Regional Commercial Director in SIEMENS’s Power Generation Services for Middle East Region, a booming market with annual order intake of €96 million.

In 2007 he returned to Singapore and was employed as the Chief Financial Officer of AERO-GATE Group.  He participated in the Group’s strategic business and financial planning processes.  He set financial goals in support of business operations and strategic directions.  He was responsible for the Group’s finance and accounting operations, including financial reporting, asset and cash management, treasury, and compliance with accepted finance and accounting standards and regulatory requirement. 

Yaw Chyun holds a Bachelor of Financial Administration from University of New England, Australia.  He is a Certified Public Accountant with Australian Society of CPAs and Institute of Certified Public Accountants in Singapore.

Christopher Kong
Chief Business Technologist

Christopher has 17 years of Information Technology experience in the banking industry.  Throughout his career, he has the opportunity to work in some of the major banks in the region such as POSB/DBS, American Express and JPMorgan Chase Bank. From 2000 to 2007, he headed the applications development team support the Asia Pacific FX eCommerce business, before moving on the head up the Futures & Options technology team in the last 3 years.

Christopher is a hands-on practitioner who is well exposed to technologies for the mission critical banking environment. He was the technical lead for the first FIX application initiative with a regional client in China.  Christopher was involved from the inception of the program, through the design/development and onto deployment. He served as technical subject matter expert to his customers and peers.

Christopher led a team to develop a web based trading application, which was used by both internal and external clients to improve their operational workflow.  As an Internet facing platform, it has to undergo stringent certification exercise by an independent body on an annual basis.

Through his tenor in the banking sector, Christopher has amassed board working knowledge of different business lines, from Fixed Income, Foreign Exchange to Futures and Options.

Building on his solid technical background, Christopher is able to work in disparate platforms, from Unix, Linux, Client Server, Web based, FIX etc.

A versatile individual who is able to adapt to different roles, he has experience in areas of software development, application support, project management and technical advisory.

Recognized for his breath of experience in both the business and technical area, he was hand picked to be part of the Quality Working Group in JPMorgan technology group.  The QWG fulfilled its mandate to achieve the industry recognized CMM accreditation. Through his effort, best practices were formalized to raise the professional competence of the technology group.

Christopher holds a Bachelor in Computing from Monash University, Australia.

Ai Makino
Chief Product Development Officer

Ai Makino has over 10 years of experience within the financial industry; 7 years concentrated on system development.  Throughout her career, she has gained experience in project management, business analysis, data/gap analysis and application development.

She started her career at Goldman Sachs, Japan Tokyo as an application developer.  She collaborated extensively with London technology team to deploy new regulatory system, which produced counterparty and position Risk figures at firm-wide level of Goldman Sachs Japan to meet regulatory requirements. 

In 2002, she was transferred to Goldman Sachs, UK London and assigned to design and develop new functionality of regulatory system as well as implemented complex, high volume data warehouse, providing infrastructure to controllers to retrieve firm’s consolidated P&L data, actual vs. budget expense information etc.  During three years in London office, she had engaged in multiple cross divisional projects working closely with product controllers and other technology functions for successful elimination of legacy system and deployment of new system flow. 

Next two years in Goldman Sachs, Co. New York, she joined product development team in prime brokerage area.  She led development of reporting products and client-facing technologies for hedge funds client base, i.e., built automatic system flow to handle huge volumes of transactions into accounting systems and produced various reports, intending to eliminate manual intervention and human errors.  She coordinated product rollout with Client Services, pilot clients and broader Hedge Funds client base.

Ai holds a degree in Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from Arizona State University, USA with ASU Regents scholarships award for international students.

Ashley Koh Ker Sing
Chief Business Development Officer

Ashley Koh started her career in New York with online brokerage TD Ameritrade as a Business Analyst during the internet boom in 1999. She participated in projects pertaining to Risk Management Control Tools, Real-Time Margin Requirement, Equity and Equity Options Trading. Her main responsibilities included creating functional specifications, designing process/data flows, and developing overall functional test plans. Managing requirement changes and coordinating tasks with other departments to meet established deadlines were part of everyday responsibilities. Besides ensuring timely delivery of system solutions, she always followed up to validate that the delivered solutions complemented the strategic objectives of the client business units.

At JP Morgan New York, Ashley continued her role as a Business Analyst before moving on to eCommerce Product Management in JP Morgan Singapore for their Foreign Exchange (FX) Sales and Trading business. Her main responsibilities were three-fold: (i) provide first line of support for daily client/trader issues with regards to FX pricing and execution, (ii) work closely with Salespeople to market and onboard clients onto the JP Morgan FX e-trading platform via client demos and presentations, and (iii) understand and keep up with the evolving FX e-trading environment to continually enhance the platform to be competitive.

In 2007, Ashley was hired as a Product Manager to transform BlackRock’s trading platform from being Fixed Income centric, to becoming a strong contender in the FX and Equity trading space. She supported Relationship Managers in client serving, marketing pitches and demo-ing the platform. She liaised with clients to understand their company vision, business needs and priorities to come up with overall solution, be it technology or business process related. Projects included supporting Spot, Forwards, Non-Deliverable Forwards, Vanilla and Exotic FX Options on the BlackRock platform, Automated Derivatives Lifecycle processing and Continuous Linked Settlement. She was responsible for end-to-end project execution, which encompassed planning, documentation, development, deployment and overall project management.

Ashley holds a Master of Business Administration from Central Michigan University, and a Bachelor of Arts and Social Sciences Degree in Economics and Statistics from the National University of Singapore.

Nobuko Sperry
Chief Project Management Officer

Nobuko Sperry has worked as a Vice President at JP Morgan, Tokyo for over 15 years.  Her career spanned across a variety of experiences covering IT management, project management, and control leadership for various businesses within the company.

Her last assignment at JP Morgan was as Head of IT for the Investment Management business in Tokyo.  She was responsible for strategic planning, overall IT requirements for the business, IT Operations and team management.

Prior to the Head of IT role, she managed the Program Management Office (PMO) and ran various projects for the Investment Management business in Tokyo.  This included new business/fund launches, operational process re-engineering, application implementation for front and back offices, and readiness to meet internal and regulatory control requirements. 

Other highlights of her career include project management for an E-commerce initiative, application delivery team manager for Fixed Income Sales, Head of Business Continuity for the Tokyo office, and application development for FX and Finance.  She also spent a year on assignment in New York as a member of Global Technology and Operations strategic architecture implementation team. 

During her early years, Nobuko was chosen twice to be part of the Asia-pacific Technology & Operations regional management committee and worked as a coordinator for the committee.  This experience helped her understand management perspectives and requirements at an early stage in her career.

Nobuko holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Keio University, Japan.  She also passed the Level one exam of Chartered Financial Analyst.