With a background in magazine writing covering the mechanical finesse of luxury watches, Ho Yun Kuan – the new assistant editor of PostTrade 360° – is ready to take on the clockwork of securities operations. For you as a reader, the expansion of this publication’s news desk should enable a steadier news flow and more frequent interviews with your industry colleagues.
“As I chart this new chapter in my career with 360° Financial Media Group, I look forward to gaining a deep understanding of the post trade and treasury sectors and to contribute to bettering our media products,” says Ho Yun Kuan. (That’s with Ho being her family name; Yun Kuan prefers the name sequence of its Cantonese origin.)
Born and raised in Singapore, Ho Yun Kuan never considered any other career than journalism, which is also the trade of her father. Three years with magazines at Singapore’s leading publishing house, Singapore Press Holdings, gave a good foundation. She then continued with work for magazines including Robb Report Singapore, work that continued on a freelance basis after she moved to join her Swedish husband in Stockholm, in 2018. While not sharing what she sees as her original nation’s “obsession with making money”, the finance industry will never feel very remote for anybody in Singapore, “the financial powerhouse of Southeast Asia”.
“I didn’t originally share the watchmakers’ passion for the physics involved in making million-dollar mechanical Swiss watches tick, but I liked looking at beautiful things, so the physics became easier to understand. The skills that have served me well as a journalist – digesting difficult information and repackaging it into a sleek product that makes for an interesting read – are applicable across topics, whether they are horology or post trade.”
A growing global audience
“We are fortunate to have found Yun Kuan living in Stockholm,” comments Daniele Truini, head of PostTrade 360°.
“With our business coming from a background of live conferences only, the success of our added media initiative in the last four years has opened new ways of serving our audience and our sponsors. Many themes are global by nature and we are seeing an increasingly diverse profile of who sign up to follow us. To grow with this, we identified the need for a full-blood magazine professional, with English as first language.”
Ho Yun Kuan will staff the media desk on a daily basis together with editor Alexander Kristofersson, who has led the PostTrade 360° media initiative since its 2019 launch. The desk is also responsible for the communication efforts around the conferences, both for PostTrade 360° and its sister brand Treasury 360°. Yet, the journalistic content for PostTrade 360° is where the main benefit of the desk expansion is expected.
“We see these big trends, like the emerging competition between central securities depositories, the battles for clearing volumes, and the changing roles for custodians and tech providers – and then the incoming DLT capabilities on the horizon. No journalist in this space will be running out of interesting stories to cover any time soon,” says Daniele Truini.