John Ho

Global Head of Legal, Financial Markets Standard Chartered

John Ho is the Global Head of Legal, Financial Markets for Standard Chartered Bank (“SCB”), overseeing and providing legal advisory, transactional and documentation support for Financial Markets (FM) business globally for Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), its branches and affiliates. Mr. Ho is also the co-chair of the ISDA South East Asia Legal and Regulatory Committee. Mr. Ho plays an active role in implementing changes within SCB to conform to applicable OTC regulatory reforms impacting FM business. He has been involved in fostering closer working relationship and rapport with industry groups and regulators on key global and regional regulatory reform changes, including Interbank Offered Rate (IBOR) reforms, MIFID II/MIFIR, Dodd Frank, EMIR, CRDIV, FATCA, CCPs and Margin Reforms for Uncleared Derivatives. In addition, Mr. Ho has supported digitisation in SCB and adoption of new or innovative technology initiatives such as digital assets, blockchain, distributed ledger technology and smart contracts. He is an active participant in the industry’s Fintech events and has shared insights on the legal and regulatory framework relating to the development of Fintech, cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), RegTech and Suptech. Mr Ho is the chair of the FIA Fintech and Cryptoasset Study Group and the global co-chair of Financial Services SIG, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA). He is a mentor of the UK Digital Sandbox Initiative, supported by the Financial Conduct Authority. He is also a mentor of R3 and LongHash, both global incubator networks which provide a full range of support for start-ups working on blockchain-related projects. Mr Ho is the author of the chapter on ‘RegTech & SupTech – Future of Compliance’ in a book entitled ‘Fintech : Law and Regulation”, published in 2019 by Edward Elgar (UK). Prior to joining SCB, Mr. Ho was the Managing Director Principal in the legal department of Bear Stearns (Japan), Ltd (“Bear Stearns”) where he supported the Asia franchise (including Tokyo, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Korea, India and South-east Asia) from January 2003 to August 2008 covering various structured products and derivatives including equity derivatives, credit derivatives, fixed income and commodities. Prior to joining Bear Stearns, Mr. Ho worked as Asia equity counsel for Lehman Brothers in Tokyo with experience dealing in convertibles, options, warrants, delta one products and other types of equity derivatives transactions, equity finance and equity capital markets. He is qualified as an advocate and solicitor in Singapore since 1995 and he received his law degree from the National University of Singapore.