Columbia Business School held its inaugural Pan-Asian Reunion in Hong Kong, China on October 24–26. Approximately 500 alumni from 29 countries, faculty members, prominent business leaders and Asian political leaders gathered to discuss critical and timely economic issues.
The event’s focus, "Asia and the World Economy," highlighted the growing importance of Asia due to its remarkable economic growth and development. John C. Tsang, financial secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, delivered the opening keynote address. At the reunion, Dean Glenn Hubbard emphasized the close relationship between the US and Asian economies. "When I was [in Asia] last winter," Hubbard said at a press conference preceding the reunion, "the fashionable discussions had all been the decoupling of the Asian economies from the United States, and that nothing that happens in the United States is relevant for Asia. Of course, it was never, and is not, true."
The event marked another milestone on the road to the opening of the EMBA-Global Asia program, a partnership between Columbia Business School, London Business School and HKU Business School. The program will welcome its inaugural class in May 2009. The cost of the reunion was covered completely by 40 sponsors including Coach, Credit Suisse, Schroders, Goldman Sachs and Kikkoman Corporation. Columbia Business School’s international reunion tradition began in Paris in 1992 with 100 participants from five countries. Before this year’s event in Hong Kong, the most recent international reunion was held in Rome in 2006 and was attended by alumni and guests from 35 countries.