Business Daily meets: activist investor David Webb
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David Webb has spent decades campaigning for the rights of ordinary investors in Hong Kong.
Since arriving in the city from the UK as a young investment banker 30 years ago, he’s taken on tycoons, exposed corporate wrongdoing, and pushed for transparency in one of the world’s most complex financial hubs. Now, as the activist investor’s life comes to an end following a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2020, he's been reflecting on his life in the corporate world.
He's spoken to the BBC's Martin Yip.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]
Presenter: Martin Yip Producer: Niamh McDermott
(Image: David Webb, activist investor and founder of Webb-site.com, speaks during a farewell event at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong on 12 May 2025. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Martin Yip and welcome to Business Daily Meets on the BBC World Service, |
| 0:07.2 | where we bring you in-depth interviews with people in business from across the globe. |
| 0:12.1 | Today we are going to Hong Kong to speak to activist investor, David Webb. |
| 0:16.5 | Hong Kong will never be dead. I hope it will retain its separate existence and there will be |
| 0:24.2 | better times ahead because there's no alternative economically. The great disappointment to me |
| 0:31.0 | that I won't be around to see how it all plays out. After decades of defending the rights of |
| 0:35.6 | retail investors, David was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2020. |
| 0:41.4 | Now, his story takes on a more personal dimension. |
| 0:44.7 | If you're diagnosed with a fatal disease at 54, suddenly your life expectancy has been reduced from about 30 years to just a few years. |
| 0:52.3 | If it's like your clock is running six times faster than you |
| 0:54.7 | expected. You reprioritise. We look back at David Webb's life and what his story tells us |
| 1:00.6 | about the future of Hong Kong. All coming up in today's Business Daily. |
| 1:07.6 | Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention, please. |
| 1:11.6 | My name is Lee Williamson. |
| 1:12.6 | I am the president of the Foreign Correspondents Club, Hong Kong. |
| 1:16.6 | Welcome to the FCC, and thank you for joining us this afternoon to say thank you, |
| 1:21.6 | and sadly farewell to investor and activist David Webb. |
| 1:26.6 | I ask each and every person to please take to your feet |
| 1:30.7 | and join me in welcoming Philip Bowering and David Webb. |
| 1:38.5 | He's Hong Kong's most prominent activist investor, |
| 1:42.6 | famous for championing transparency and his investigations into |
| 1:46.3 | corporate wrongdoing, an inspiration to many. But who exactly is David Webb? |
... |
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