Keith Mullin, KM Capital Markets: At the sharp end of creating instruments, securities structures that meet the need, I am a little sceptical about the preparedness of bond investors to rise to the challenge and take up the slack in infrastructure financing. You’re very close to the market, Alexi. Is my scepticism warranted? Alexi Chan, HSBC: What’s going to be important is that we mobilise the full arsenal of financing options in order to have a chance of achieving the very large numbers needed

Welcome to this IFR seminar, entitled “Mobilising Asian Investors for Sustainable Development”. One of the central themes of the 2017 ADB meetings in Yokohama is infrastructure. In this session, I wanted to go beyond restating the vast sums of money needed and discuss if and to what extent the infrastructure funding gap can be closed by capital markets, which is a key assumption among policymakers. We will also talk about the emergence of green finance in Asia and address topics relevant to Asia

IFR Asia Asian Development Bank Roundtable 2017: Roundtable participants   Søren Elbech Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Søren Elbech has been treasurer of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank since December 2016, based in Beijing. Before that, he served as treasurer of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC between December 2007 and April 2014 and of Eksportfinans between 2002 and 2007. Earlier, Elbech worked at Nordic Investment Bank and at Danske Bank.   Andreas Dombret

IFR’s annual ADB roundtable, held as part of the Asian Development Bank’s annual meetings hosted this year by Yokohama, took place at a significant moment. This year marked not just the 20th anniversary of the Asian financial crisis but more importantly perhaps the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Asian Development Bank. In the case of the latter, it was certainly right and fitting to focus on the enormous and extraordinary strides Asia has made since the mid-1960s in its economic develop