Speech at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Groundbreaking Ceremony of Hong Kong Campus at Mount Davis

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Groundbreaking Ceremony of Hong Kong Campus at Mount Davis

11:00 a.m. on 18 June 2016 (Saturday)

Professor Sunil Kumar, Mr Francis Yuen, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

　　Good morning. 

　　It is indeed my great pleasure to join you all here today for the ground breaking ceremony of the Hong Kong campus of The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth).

　　Chicago Booth has been consistently recognised as a top-notch business school in the world.  And I must say that the School has made a very wise “business” decision by moving its Asian campus from Singapore to Hong Kong, which we proudly present to the world as the most competitive and freest economy.  We are geographically centred in Asia.  We have the strong back up by our country and we are also closely linked with other Asian economies and the rest of the world.  It is therefore a win-win situation for Chicago Booth and Hong Kong – for Chicago Booth, Hong Kong is an ideal choice for easier recruitment of more quality students given our business friendly environment and abundance of talent; for Hong Kong, we are pleased to have another world-renowned EMBA programme operator stationing in our city. 

　　Our Government attaches great importance to investing in education and keeps increasing resources to provide quality education and training for the purposes of facilitating upward social mobility and promoting the sustainable development of Hong Kong.  Despite the challenge brought by an aging population and the resultant pressure on the demand for social welfare and health services, HK is still persistent in investing in education. Our recurrent education expenditure continued to grow annually with a cumulative growth of almost 70% over the past decade.  Education takes up the largest share among all policy areas - for every five dollars we spend, we spend one on education.

　　Although no recurrent Government expenditure is rendered to our self-financing post-secondary education sector, including the Chicago Booth as an integral member, we do support the healthy and sustainable development of the sector through a series of favourable measures such as the Land Grant Scheme, which the Chicago Booth has benefitted from, with the allocation of the land site we are standing on.  The allocation of this site demonstrates strong commitment of the Government in supporting the internationalisation and diversification of the self-financing post-secondary education sector.

　　With its outstanding faculty and alumni network, I believe that Chicago Booth is able to provide an excellent environment that helps enhance the intellectual capital of the executives in our region, strengthen Hong Kong’s position as a regional education hub and bolster the city’s competitiveness.

　　We are all full of excitement and expectation about this new venture.  This groundbreaking ceremony shall signify a new chapter for both Chicago Booth and this historic site.  I have much faith in the professional campus development team of the School and I am eager to witness its completion in about two years’ time.

　　Thank you very much and have a great weekend.