Board of Directors

Chair, UK-ASEAN Business Council

Ed Vaizey was appointed to the UK House of Lords in September 2020, where he sits as a Conservative Peer and is a Member of the Communications and Digital Committee.

Ed was the Member of Parliament for Wantage between 2005 and 2019. He served as the UK Government Culture and Digital Minister from 2010-16 and is the longest-serving Minister in that role. He was appointed a privy councillor in 2016.

Ed served as Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 2017 and 2019.

Vice Chair, UK-ASEAN Business Council and General Manager, Head of Commercial Banking UK, HSBC

Stuart Tait was appointed Head of Commercial Banking UK in December 2021 and is responsible for HSBC’s relationships with 900,000 large, medium and small business clients.

He is a General Manager at HSBC Group, one of the world‘s largest banking and financial services organisations with assets of nearly US$3 trillion.

Before his current role, Stuart was Regional Head of Commercial Banking for Asia Pacific, the leading international wholesale bank in the region and one of the Group‘s fastest-growing franchises.

Stuart has worked in financial services for over 30 years. He joined HSBC in 1984 as an International Manager and has held various positions in Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Human Resources and Risk. Previous assignments with HSBC have been based in various Asia markets, the Middle East, the US, Canada and in the Group‘s Head Office.

Chief Executive, UK-ASEAN Business Council

Ian was appointed CEO of the UK-ASEAN Business Council in September 2020. Before taking up this position, he had held a variety of roles across government including British Consul General in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Deputy Consul General and Director of UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) in Dubai, Deputy Director of UKTI in India, Senior Private Secretary to the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) Secretaries of State (Alistair Darling, Alan Johnson, and Patricia Hewitt) and Director of Business Development with the MWW Group in New York working in public relations.

Before this, he spent – 4.5 years – also in New York – as head of Invest UK’s Regional Inward Investment Team (the British Government’s agency responsible for attracting inward investment from the United States to the UK).

Chief Executive, ACCA

Helen Brand is chief executive of ACCA, the global body for professional accountants. Since taking up the role in 2008, Helen has led ACCA through a period of global growth which has seen its membership double to more than a quarter of a million. ACCA’s diverse and inclusive community has expanded to cover 180 countries and also includes more than half a million future members.

Helen is a passionate advocate of the role of accountants in driving an ethical, sustainable and inclusive approach to business and the public sector, and is a frequent speaker on these issues. She has widened ACCA’s role in advancing the profession and contributing to the public good, for example through its pioneering work to support the development of the profession in emerging economies and its leadership in developing the skills needed for sustainability reporting and assurance.

She was a founding member of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and played a role in its successor organisations.

Helen is also a member of the UK government’s Professional and Business Services Council and has participated in a number of trade advisory forums and university advisory boards. In 2022, under India’s leadership, she was a member of the B20 Task Force on the Future of Work, Skills and Mobility and in June 2023 she joined the Board of the UK-ASEAN Business Council (UKABC).

Helen was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in June 2011 for services to accountancy and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter in December 2017.

Country Chairman Myanmar & Cambodia, Matheson & Co Limited

After graduating from Bristol University, Peter joined PwC’s London office and qualified as an ICAEW Chartered Accountant in 1981. Post qualification he spent over 20 years with the Jardine Matheson group working in several senior finance and management roles in Asia and the Middle East. In 2014 Peter was re-engaged by Jardine Matheson to head the group’s development of its business portfolio in Myanmar and Cambodia.

Vice Chairman ASEAN, Standard Chartered Bank

Rino Donosepoetro was appointed as Standard Chartered’s Vice Chairman for ASEAN in October 2019. In this role, he is responsible for driving the execution of the Bank’s ASEAN strategy and providing governance oversight over the Bank’s footprints that span across all 10 ASEAN countries. Before this, he held the role of CEO for Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia since September 2016 and he was the first Indonesian to hold this post in the Bank’s 157 years of operations in the country.

In a global career spanning 24 years with Standard Chartered, Mr Donosepoetro has held diverse roles across businesses and functions in different markets – Indonesia, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Brunei Darussalam, and the Falkland Islands. He joined the Bank as a Graduate Trainee and started his career with Consumer Banking in Indonesia before moving to London in 2001 to take up the role of Executive Assistant to Group CEO. He then joined the Europe Corporate Banking team and subsequently the Consumer Banking team for the Middle East & South Asia out of Dubai in 2004. As Project Director for the Bank’s Group M&A in London, he led Standard Chartered’s successful acquisition of Permata Bank in Indonesia and American Express Bank in the US.

Rino Donosepoetro spent four years from 2010 as the Bank’s Regional Head of Internal Audit for Asia based in Singapore. Before being CEO of Indonesia, Mr Donosepoetro also held the role of CEO for Standard Chartered Bank in the Falkland Islands and Brunei Darussalam.

In addition to his current role, Mr Donosepoetro is the President Commissioner for Standard Chartered Bank Indonesia and the Bank’s Sustainable Finance champion for ASEAN & South Asia. He also sits on several international Boards including the digital venture Nexus Company Ltd Singapore, UK-ASEAN Business Council, WEF APAC Regional Action Group for Sustainability and he was recently appointed as Vice Chairman of the British Chambers of Commerce Indonesia.

Senior Vice President, Pearson

Freya Thomas Monk is a Senior Vice President at Pearson plc, an FTSE 100 company specialising in education. Pearson employs over 20,000 people in over 70 countries including a strong presence in ASEAN nations. At Pearson, Freya is responsible for the global English language testing business and has successfully grown the business over the past five years to be a notable market player. Freya holds an MA from Oxford University and an MBA from INSEAD (Paris). She lives in London with her husband and three children and is Chair of Governors of a Lambeth primary school.

Partner, Strategic International Markets, PwC United Kingdom

Suwei is a Partner within Strategic International Markets at PwC UK. She has specific responsibilities for leading PwC services in support of bilateral and multilateral trade and investments with Greater China & Southeast Asia markets.

Suwei is an audit and deals partner by background and has been dealing with all aspects of Greater China and ASEAN inbound and outbound businesses across different sectors for the past 18 years. Suwei is an experienced practitioner in delivering market access, M&A and capital markets transactions, financing projects, and advisory engagements for private sector clients in the UK, China and Southeast Asia.

On the public sector front, she regularly advises the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and the Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) on a range of projects in the Asian region, including the delivery of large-scale multi-year ODA programmes including FSIP and Better Health programmes in Southeast Asia, and the Prosperity Fund Business Environment Programme in China. Suwei has also been advising the City of London Corporation and the Lord Mayor of the City of London regarding their Asia engagement strategies.

Suwei was born and brought up in China. She has an MBA in International Business with Distinction from Bristol University. Suwei is a fluent English and Mandarin speaker, with basic knowledge of German and Cantonese.

Senior Director, International & UK Government Relations & Public Policy and Office of the Chair, Prudential plc

Duncan joined Prudential plc, the Asia and Africa-focused life and health insurer and asset manager, in 2016. He started his career in the UK civil service, primarily working on the UK's trade and investment relationship with Asian markets and as a private secretary to the UK Business Secretary during the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Before joining Prudential, he worked in a public policy consultancy and as Chief of Staff to the Chair and CEO of the UK's Banking Standards Board.

Deputy Trade Commissioner, Southeast Asia

Observer to the Board

Rhiannon joined the UK Civil Service in 2006 and is currently Deputy Trade Commissioner for Southeast Asia, responsible for the trade and investment relationship between the UK and ASEAN. She is based at the British High Commission in Singapore and leads a team of 90 staff across the region.

Rhiannon’s previous positions have included Director for the Better Regulation Executive in DBT HQ and Deputy Trade Commissioner for South Asia, based at the British High Commission in New Delhi. Her career has spanned several government departments on topics including business, energy, civil nuclear, policing and national security.

Rhiannon grew up in Worcestershire and studied at University College, Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is married to Himanshu Pandey, an independent filmmaker.