On Monday 20 September our Chamber had the pleasure of welcoming to our in-person & digital stage Mr. Charles Li, former Chief Executive at the Hong Kong Exchange. Mr. Li recently founded a new company called Micro Connect and we were curious to hear more about it.
Thanks to our gracious venue host Invest Hong Kong we were able to safely host around 50 in-person guests + another 40 attendees on Zoom.
Mr. Li delighted attendees with stories of his time with HKEX and of course explained how Micro Connect makes full use of Hong Kong’s robust investment climate to offer investment products geared towards raising capital for small & micro enterprises in Mainland China.
By using the very high penetration of digital tracking prevalent in nearly every business in Mainland China, from large to small companies, very secure methods exist to supply investment capital to micro enterprises. And what’s more: thanks to a large amount of the transactions taking place in the digital domain, a large amount of objective data can be used by investors to keep track of & evaluate their investment targets. Micro Connect is looking to work with so called ‘ARMs’: automated repayment method partners such as platforms, franchisers and SAAS groups.
Mr. Li describes the efforts of Micro Connect as ‘drip irrigation’: the amounts of investment for each micro enterprise are not big but they are big enough to have an impact and supply investors with a safe target and relatively predictable returns.
Where Micro Connect tries to be different from banks, is that Micro Connect offers a product better fitting to the volatility of their targets. Where a bank loan can become a noose at times when business is slow for a micro enterprise, an investment is not. And where a bank can only earn back the capped amount of interest on a bank loan, investors can earn back multiple times their investment when the business of a micro enterprise skyrockets.
The approach of Micro Connect is equity in essence but revenue sharing in reality.
It was a huge pleasure to have so many guests attending this event in-person, it had been a while since the BLCC put together such a large in-person event again. We extend thanks to our speaker Charles Li & the team at Micro Connect, to our venue partner Invest Hong Kong for the great collaboration, to our co-hosting Chambers (Dutch, Singaporean, Swedish, Malaysian, German & French) and last but not least to our guests for joining in online and in-person.