Episode 49 - Iñaki Amate

In this episode, we welcome Iñaki Amate, design industry innovator and chair of the European Chamber of Commerce. Iñaki traces his globetrotting career, which has taken him from his native Spain to Finland, Hong Kong and many places in between, the work of EuroCham, and why it is important for Hong Kong to attract talented professionals from all over the world. He speaks with our Senior Partner Colin Cohen. Stay tuned.

00:48 Introduction to Iñaki Amate
01:28 Current Busy Season in Hong Kong
02:18 Iñaki's Early Life and Education
03:36 Journey to Finland and Professional Beginnings
04:39 Building a Career in Digital Innovation
07:54 Founding and Growing Fjord
11:23 Transition to Hong Kong
15:31 Role at EY and European Chamber of Commerce
18:42 Challenges and Opportunities in Hong Kong
28:14 Future Outlook and Personal Reflections 

Host: Colin Cohen
Director: Niall Donnelly
Producer and VO: Thomas Latter  

Transcript

[00:48:00] Colin: Welcome everyone.. Today, I'm looking forward to what promises to be a fascinating conversation with Iñaki Amate, who is not only the senior executive with a global professional service firm, Ernst & Young, also known as EY, where he specializes in digital innovation and design. also chair of a European Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. Iñaki hails from Spain, spent some two decades based in Finland. More about that later. As I always ask my guests, what's been keeping you busy recently?

[00:48:40] Iñaki: Thank you very much for having me here. . I've been looking forward to this, actually, this is a very busy season for anyone here in Hong Kong.

It's like a big sprint towards the Christmas holidays, but here in Hong Kong, it looks like everyone is piling a number of events every day and sometimes like 2, 3, 4 events in the same day. So that keeps me relatively busy. But a couple of things, I guess we at the European Chamber, we just finished our our first actually annual sentiment survey, and that's been keeping me busy. They're trying to collect all these Perceptions and feelings from our members and we can talk a little bit about that afterwards if you are interested. And obviously at work, you know project work with clients. That's always there at the end of the year you know how it is in a professional service company, right?

[00:49:24] Colin: I know exactly everybody wants everything done before people try to get away for the holidays. Let's go back in time a little bit and talk to me about your upbringing. Obviously, you come from Spain. Zaragoza, I understand. Tell me about your upbringing and what and your and your education. We'll get a little bit background.

[00:49:44] Iñaki: Definitely. So my parents were civil servants in Spain and we are coming from a family of four siblings. We come from a very small but very beautiful town called Alcaniz, which is in the middle of Teodwell, a very small province in Spain. But we move when I was relatively young to a very beautiful town called Tarragona, south of Barcelona, live there for 10 years.

I learned Catalan and then after that we moved to Saragossa. My parents wanted that we live in the place where we can study university studies and Saragossa has a pretty good university. So that's where, basically, I started studying. Very soon, I started to realize that what I was looking forward to study and become was not necessarily out of the traditional universities in Spain. And the education model in Spain was also a little bit different from what I was looking for. So one day, I met my, now his wife. And she's a Finnish beautiful lady and very smart. And we started dating. She was an exchange student at my university.

And I fell in love and I decided to follow her to Finland. And yeah, I took the opportunity to become a exchange student in Helsinki. And there is where I really found the opportunity to study in a format that allowed me to put together studies around design, technology, and business, which was what really I was struggling to find out something that would put those things together.

[00:51:09] Colin: You also, I understand, went to Wolverhampton,

[00:51:11] Iñaki: Yeah, that's right, 

[00:51:13] Colin: Is a little bit interesting. 

[00:51:14] Iñaki: That's right. 

[00:51:15] Colin: Tell me how, how did you get to Wolverhampton? 

[00:51:17] Iñaki: So after I started first exchange to Helsinki, I had to finish my bachelor's first and there was an opportunity to do a exchange well half a, it was a semester 

[00:51:26] Colin: at 

[00:51:27] Iñaki: Wolverhampton, yeah. 

[00:51:28] Colin: Obviously to watch football, Wolves or Birmingham.

[00:51:31] Iñaki: That's right. Yeah. 

[00:51:32] Colin: Yeah. 

Are you a football fan?

[00:51:33] Iñaki: Yeah. Of course I am. Yes. And my kids are even more fans than me. That Real Madrid for them is almost like a cult.

[00:51:39] Colin: Yeah of course, I shouldld interrupt there. I was in the Euros and England gets to the final and of course your country Spain took, well, we were beaten, well beaten, but it got a little bit tasty at one little stage. Anyway, so Finland, with your wife working there and tell us a little bit more after you sort of finish your studies, how you then use all your studies to get into the work.

In particular, I'm interested about this about Fjord. You'll tell me about that. So to give a bit of background.

[00:52:08] Iñaki: Yeah, sure. So I think probably the most interesting thing about studying in Finland. I mean, people know Finland as one of the best education systems in the world. So the model is radically different to what it is in Spain. But one of the things that does is actually combines also very well the opportunity to work and study.

So very soon I was actually given the opportunity to work with the largest or the most profitable company in Northern Europe. People don't know about this, but it used to be a company called Alco. Alco is the state owned company in Finland that is in charge of importation, distribution, and retail of alcoholic beverages.

And and in Finland, that's a big thing. So I started to work with them, helping them to lobby in the European Union to keep the monopoly position. It was very interesting and it was a soft diplomacy type of work. So I actually work very closely with the Spanish wine producers to help them understand the benefits of the monopoly versus not, and take them through the process of how they could take advantage of it and how they could actually become more succesful in selling in those markets. So that actually helped me to develop a little bit of this project manager specialty or expertise. But it was not necessarily my passion. I spend as a student, being able to work with the alcohol monopoly. I learned a lot about wines.

We have wine tastings every Tuesday. We have to taste the whole catalog once a month. And you can imagine, university student that that is terrible, of course,

But then eventually my passion, really, like I mentioned before, it was in that convergence of new technologies, business and design and I enrolled myself into one of the first internet or master's programs that had internet at the core.

And that was from the City School of Economics in Helsinki. And literally, I mean, the week the school started, they had a job fair. And I was hired on the spot to work with this very small, but still the first internet consulting firm in Scandinavia. It was called Satama Interactive.

And I started to work that way. It was not that big at the time, but very soon we started to grow. My client was at the time company. Maybe not many people know today, but it was Nokia dot com.

[00:54:21] Colin: And everyone, I always remember Nokia, the little small phone. Today actually, it does a lot of business on burner phones.

And for our listeners, that means a little phone that you have nothing on it but telephoning it when you dispose of it. So it's the ideal communication if you want to do something a little bit naughty or off the grid.

[00:54:39] Iñaki: And very reliable and with long lasting battery, right? Which is something that today. So yeah, I work with them for a few years It was a fantastic ride because we we went from growing Internationally, going IPO. Then the crash of the internet bubble. So we actually lost all the potential money that we were going to make on that.

But then eventually, I went with one of the founders and started another engagement by bringing four agencies together. We did that for a couple of years and then in one of those days in 2003, 2004. This is an interesting fact. I mean, LinkedIn launched at the beginning of 2004. So in the middle of 2004, I was one of the first 100,000 users of LinkedIn.

And I received a message from LinkedIn, from somebody in the U. K. That found my profile and was looking for somebody to help them to do a project not in Finland because they had a project with Nokia. And I said, Okay, let's talk. And that's how I decided to join. And there were these three guys from the UK. And they just want this project. They wanted somebody to join them on. Yeah, I basically joined and we started off Fior basically, which is a company that originally we were starting as company doing mostly user experience and user interface design, but we grew quite a lot out of the relationship with Nokia.

We grow the team a lot. I wanted to diversify because I was too dependent on the relations with Nokia. So I started to open offices first in Stockholm. Then we started to open another one in central Europe and so on, so on. And we grew basically to become the largest design company in the world.

[00:56:09] Colin: This is Fior.

[00:56:10] Iñaki: Fior, yeah.

[00:56:11] Colin: And tell us a little bit about, I think our listeners are interested, what do you mean by design? Just help me, in a nutshell, as if I was from the planet Mars and I have no idea what you are doing. Explain it to me. 

[00:56:24] Iñaki: So, Design is nothing else than problem solving, but it's problem solving, applying a methodology that is being traditionally used for doing physical products. And if you think about when you create something, you probably need to think about for whom is going to be what kind of needs that you're trying to resolve.

And then think about creating first a prototype, see if it works. Testing if it resolves the needs that you were intending to resolve. And if it does, then you basically evolve it and fine tune it until something that you can then productize. Now, we thought that why don't we apply this method to anything?

And originally we thought, okay, we will do this around digital services because that was the thing that was growing quite a lot at the time, obviously, website design was one of the big things, but we realized that people were starting to move. They didn't really want to sit in front of the computers to access information and then access services.

So we thought, okay, we need to start creating multichannel services in mobile as well, but then in other dimensions as well in other channels. And that's when we started to talk about more the fact that we are designing not just for one interface, but we are actually designing services that are going to be going across digital, physical.

The next level that we realize is that it's not just designing, but you need to help the organizations to Strategize you know why they need to create a service. What kind of business they are going to be able to generate with it. How much money they are going to make with it. So it becomes like a much more larger component.

[00:57:52] Colin: I think that's very, very interesting. So you did very well with Fjord and then you were able to make some money out of it as I understand. 

[00:58:00] Iñaki: yes. yes. Accenture bought us out. And then obviously we had to spend some time in helping to integrate the business in Accenture, which went really well. I think that definitely will become at some point one business case in some of the business schools. But yes, some of the money that I got from Accenture, I decided to invest.

I started to invest into startups and that continues also when I came here to Hong Kong and I started to invest into Companies here in Hong Kong. And then all of a sudden friends would like to join in some of that and we started an investment Club. 

[00:58:32] Colin: Well, let's just sort of just backtrack a little bit. What got you into Hong Kong? When did you first come here?

It's nine years. You've been there for nine years. So what was the magic of you getting into Hong Kong?

[00:58:43] Iñaki: So we need to backtrack to around year 2000. My wife's parents he was working for the World Bank in a project in the Mekong River Commission in trying to basically develop in a sustainable way the whole area around the Mekong River. And we would come here, they did that for 15 years, so they live in Vietnam they live in Phnom Penh, in Ho Chi Minh City.

So our summer holidays or winter holidays, we would always come here for a few days to this part of the world. And in one of those trips, we passed through Hong Kong. And I remember saying to my wife, wow, this is the kind of place that I hope I wish one day we come back and work here. So that's how we started.

That's 2000. Then move forward to when Accenture bought us. We were living at the time in Madrid. So I was in Madrid for three years because when we were in international expansion, Helsinki becomes a little bit of a very difficult Station to move to Japan to go to Japan to go to Latin America.

Madrid is a bit more centric when you have to take this long haul flight. So we were living in Madrid. But then at the time of the acquisition, they said, Okay, you probably need to go back to Scandinavia, take care of part of the offices that we have in that part of the world and help us to go through that integration.

The movement back to Finland was a bit traumatic for us after Madrid. So Madrid is a bit like Hong Kong. So you have social life every day. It's full of life through the year. 

[01:00:07] Colin: And a lovely climate. 

[01:00:08] Iñaki: And a lovely climate. 

[01:00:09] Colin: Helsinki can be wonderful for a few months of the year. But That's all. 

[01:00:13] Iñaki: That's right. So then back to Helsinki, I think that was one of the things that became a little bit hard to digest. And we talked to my wife and we said, look, if we have a chance, let's see if we can go again somewhere. So it was about a year after we were living in Finland. And I went back to my partners and I said. Look good, but if we can basically find something else, that'd be perfect. And they offered me to choose between Milan, San Francisco and Hong Kong, and it was a very obvious decision. You had to be Hong Kong.

[01:00:41] Colin: And your family and you all moved to Hong 

So tell us a little bit about your early experiences of Hong Kong, remind me when you arrived in Hong Kong. 

[01:00:48] Iñaki: So it was actually mid 2015.

[01:00:51] Colin: Ah right so. interesting times. 

[01:00:53] Iñaki: Yeah, it was interesting times, but it was a very vibrant. A very vibrant atmosphere. There was a lot happening. Everyone was full of energy, lots of companies, lots of business very dynamic, international and diverse environment. I think those first three years, it was it was fantastic socially for the family to the point that after those first three years, accenture offered me to go back to Europe.

I think typically when you do assignments abroad in Accenture is three years max. And then they said, okay, now it's, you can go back and choose where you want to go And again, they offer me to go back to Scandinavia or go to Barcelona and take care of a business in Southern Europe. And I went to Barcelona.

It was a dream, being a Spaniard, Barcelona is a beautiful place. But this was the weeks before the referendum. I don't know if you remember that there was an illegal referendum happening. 

[01:01:47] Colin: Catalan and locking up politicians. I remember that. And, how can I say a little tasty on the streets of Barcelona. 

[01:01:54] Iñaki: Yes. So it put me off completely arriving to Barcelona and seeing how tense the atmosphere was.

It really felt very unwelcoming for somebody that wanted to set their family there at the time. So I came back home and I talked to my wife and I said, look, I mean, I don't know if I want to go through this. I don't know how it would be for the kids. I don't know how it would be for you or for me. So we sat over lunch, the family, the four of us, and then we put it to a vote and my wife wanted to go and then the rest of us wanted to stay. It was very lucky because at the time we had an offer on the table from EY to help them to build something very similar, like I had been doing for Accenture and I said, yeah, why not? Let's do it, so we stayed. 

[01:02:43] Colin: So you started working with EY. helping them with their clients, because actually it's quite interesting. Everyone thinks EY as all these big price ward, PWC, as just pure bean counters, counting the money. But no, they have an incredible amount of business support, diversity and encouraging business. So you went in doing that. 

[01:03:04] Iñaki: That's correct, and also it was at the time very much associated as auditors and accountants. But they had a very strong consulting arm, and my job was basically to help them to expand the offering in consulting and start building also a brand of EY in the world of creative, marketing, design, digital offering.

So that was my role. 

[01:03:27] Colin: you're still, there working with So let's now bring in Eurocham. Which is sort of the shorthand for the European Chamber of Commerce. Tell us a little bit about that. This is your opportunity to have a bit of a promotion. And what you do, and how it all works, how the Chamber of Commerce works, and you're involvement. 

How did that all come about?

[01:03:48] Iñaki: Well, first of all, I ended there because I was invited to join first the Finnish Chamber of Commerce. So again, all these years living in Finland. When I came here with a Finn company originally, in one of those Christmas dinners, somebody approached me and said, Hey we heard that you're here.

Why wouldn't you join the board? And first I didn't want to join a board. Only for the sake of joining the boards, I said, okay, I'll go and see what it is. And if I see that I can value, I will stay. And that's how the whole thing started. Very soon I started spending time, helping them to look into what should be their purpose of the chamber.

Then start defining a little bit what would be the vision. And eventually I was asked to first become the vice chair, then the chair. Once I became the chair, I realized that the Finnish Chamber was actually part of the European Chamber. So the European Chamber is a chamber of chambers. And the main purpose of the European Chamber is actually to lobby on behalf of the European companies that are under the national chambers. The national chambers main objective and purpose is to actually help to promote the businesses off their members, right? And that's done in a number of ways is by organizing events, networking. But when it comes to activities like helping to elevate to the government when we feel that there is not a fur environment for European firms to operate. Or when we see that there is an opportunity to change or improve regulation or legislation, the European chamber jumps in and has that mandate or access to the government and umbrella for the national chambers.

[01:05:23] Colin: Obviously, you must be very busy. How much time does the European as you can take up for your time compared to your work with EY. 

[01:05:29] Iñaki: It could take as much as possible, right? But so it's really about time management. And I think that I've been very lucky over the years to have a fantastic team that actually does most of the work. And for me, it's many times mostly just to with the rest of the directors of the board to give a little bit of guidance.

And then in some cases to be a little bit the image in front of the government or in front of the media when when that has been the case.

[01:05:54] Colin: So at the moment now, obviously, the Hong Kong business community, the economy is not as good as it was in the past. There are issues and difficulties post covid and all the other matters. And your views as to what you can offer being the chamber. What you bring to a table.

I arrive, I have a company here. How would you help me out? 

[01:06:15] Iñaki: I think first of all, The National Chambers are probably the platform for helping organizations that arrive here and they need a hand to start their operations here in Hong Kong. They are the ones that they have the network, they are the ones that they have probably the right platform and services to help.

They will make the connections to companies like yours that actually provide the services that help them to find how to settle, how to manage their businesses when they are not necessarily having a proper presence. But the European Chamber of Commerce. Probably offers a platform for them to get connected across all the different national chambers.

it gives us a platform to get connected to a much wider ecosystem because we are also connected to the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce. But I think where we really bring our value is by elevating and raising the voice when we see and hear things that need to be up in front of the government or organizations that can help us to make sure that we operate in a fair environment.

[01:07:16] Colin: Ok, so give an example, naming no names of course, dealing with the Hong Kong government. What issues are you very concerned about that the government to address and deal with right now, having regard to all the issues that we're facing. 

[01:07:28] Iñaki: Sure, so in the past, we've been very successful in helping, for example, the automotive industry to make sure that there was a fair play ground for European manufacturers that wanted to enter the market. And at a time where a lot of the regulation was originally designed for, car models and mini bus models that were primarily designed and produced in Japan. So then we actually started to discuss with the government that it would be important and relevant that I mean, it's not constrained only to those type of models. But it's actually open to anyone that is fulfilling the minimum levels of security and safety nets, right?

So we managed to make that change. You might recall that also during the Covid years., we had a very relevant role in speaking up about the importance of taking into consideration the needs of the expat or the international community Hong Kong when the measures that the government introduced made it extremely difficult for us to go back to see our families and relatives and coming back and having to stay in this very lengthy quarantines. 

[01:08:35] Colin: Yeah, that had a lot of issues at that time as well.

[01:08:38] Iñaki: Exactly. So we were actually one of those that we are lobbying the hardest to make sure that I mean, some of those changes were made. More recently, we've been actually very active talking about a couple of things. The first one is the fact that we all recognize that there is a need for attracting talent to Hong Kong.

And that's mostly because during the COVID years, there was a massive migration of foreign talent that has been replaced, but it has been replaced primarily by mainland talent. That basically has brought a significant change in the demographics of Hong Kong. Demographics that also have an impact on the position of Hong Kong as a business, because we used to have organizations present here in Hong Kong that they would use Hong Kong as a basis for their regional headquarters.

But then, after all these changes, many of these have become local sales offices or domestic sales offices. So, we also recognize that if Hong Kong wants to remain one of the most international cities in the world, there is a need for diversity. There's a need for diversity of people, talent, you name it.

And attracting talent has become a global fight. Finland is trying to attract people because there is an aging population. Singapore is attracting the Middle East. So we know that, I mean, it's not easy. So if we want to attract these people, we need to make it. Interesting for them to come to Hong Kong.

And yes, we all know Hong Kong is a fantastic city. The ones that we live here, we know it's a fantastic city. But, through the COVID years, we managed to ruin a lot of the reputation of Hong Kong. And the problem is that to gain back that reputation takes a lot of time and effort, and we are not there yet.

[01:10:20] Colin: So what do you ask the government to do to assist? I know we have many talent schemes to make immigration easier. Or is it too bureaucratic? So when you meet with the government, what would you really say to them? What what do they want? What do you think is needed right now.

[01:10:36] Iñaki: So a number of things is not a simple problem that you can just fix with one pill. You need to basically have multiple actions. I mean, number one is that we cannot forget that English has to be one of the main languages spoken in Hong Kong.

That helps us to be competitive against places like Singapore and very different from Tokyo, for example. But the use of English has deteriorated dramatically in the last years. Across the board, starting from schools all the way to university and in service industry. I mean, you take a taxi today and you're lucky if they understand what you're saying in English, right?

So for those that we are here might be fine. But if you basically come here for business it's a bit harder. The second thing is how many channels in media are today using English is also a lot less than what it used to be. So if we want to really make sure that this is considered a proper international city, the government probably needs to think about incentive schemes for making sure that private media channels are.

Considering the number of hours that they can broadcast in English I think it's also that the fact that I mean, we are not able to attract people is because our brand is not as strong as it used to be, especially with a younger generation. So I think we are also recommending to the government is probably to think about engaging the private sector and the public sector to work together in thinking about.

What is the best way to create a world brand today and try to also look into how others are doing it, like, look at the Saudi Arabia, look at Thailand, how much money they allocate to basically rebrand themselves at the country level. And look into becoming a world class brand in that level.

[01:12:17] Colin: That's quite interesting, as chair, I know you're asked by the media for your views on the economy and certain government policy initiatives. Broadly, what are your thoughts on Hong Kong's recovery at the moment? Post Covid, where we're going at the now? 

[01:12:33] Iñaki: It's very good, and very good timing because like I said at the beginning, we just finished our survey and it can be summarized in two words, Cautious Optimism. And it's because there would be sectors like the financial sectors, the financial service sector that they see this very strategically Hong Kong and they see that they are probably less impacted by the current situation in in the economy in Hong Kong, they depend much more off global trends. But then you have other sectors like the retail or hospitality that they have been suffering quite a lot, and they are a lot more pragmatic about the way that they are basically addressing in.

The daily challenges. Then you would have other sectors like technology that they are like a lot more in between. So thinking, all right, so Hong Kong could be a very interesting place for us to be. And therefore we want to see how this is going to evolve over the next months or years. In our survey, there are those that are definitely still thinking that if the situation does not improve, they will probably think about going somewhere else and they are scanning and planning about it.

But there are those that are definitely betting in Hong Kong. There's a majority that basically says Hong Kong is probably one of the best places in the world to live. It has the right mix off elements, and we just want to see the situation getting better. 

[01:13:51] Colin: And the stepping stone, because in the past everyone came to Hong Kong because You came into Hong Kong and we needed your business directly into China. Now what's all your members thoughts about that at the moment, with travel and all the rest? 

[01:14:05] Iñaki: So I think It's been and it is one of the main propositions for Hong Kong and for the members to choose Hong Kong to stay. At the beginning of the year and the last year, we were actually saying to the government, please, please, please, can you make traveling to China easier?

And the great thing is that the government has actually listened and also the Chinese government have listened. 

[01:14:25] Colin: Well, they have, I have that wonderful card, which I just used last week going into China, but you've gotta be a permanent resident to get that. The card doesn't work for someone's who just here for a short period of time. So I presume you're trying to get them, don't wait for the seven years. It should be for everybody to have that card. 

[01:14:42] Iñaki: Yes, definitely. So I think there are still steps that need to be done in order to make it even smoother. But, but the fact that I mean, we can see that they are very reactive. I'm very very much acting on the on the comments. It talks a lot about the this this government. I think the relationship that the government of Hong Kong has with the Business Community.

The international business community is quite unique, very difficult to find probably in other countries. And here definitely it was really well, it can work better. I think one of the things that we keep saying is that the format probably could be a little bit more modern. We could have more working groups instead of big sessions where we basically just talk to each other, but despite that, I think we are very happy with the ecosystem here in Hong Kong.

[01:15:26] Colin: And you personally are optimistic for the future of Hong Kong?

[01:15:31] Iñaki: I am, definitely. I think that everybody talks about resilience off the Hong Kong people, and I definitely think that Hong Kong is moving forward. I think that the recovery that everyone was waiting and hoping for after COVID in the form of a sharp V or U has not happened, and it's not going to happen.

I think we are going to be seeing more like a steady recovery, like a slow, steady recovery. And a lot probably will have to do with the geopolitics around us. I think the fact that, I mean, we are In the cross line between the interest of big groups, between the east and the west and the north and the south means that we will probably be also used in some cases, but what I feel, and this is maybe the message, in the past, we've been focusing a lot our activities in trying to lobby here in Hong Kong on behalf of our members, for the Hong Kong government. Probably a lot of what we need to start doing now is probably lobby elsewhere.

We probably need to start lobbying also a lot more in Europe, with the governments and countries in Europe, to make them understand that the image that they have of Hong Kong is very distorted by the media, that they should come here and see by themselves, and maybe put politics on one side, and, business on the other and focus on business, you know?

[01:16:51] Colin: I think that's a very, very good point. Now, for a personal view, you've been in Hong Kong for nine years. Clearly you love this city like we all do, and you know why it's so unique. Your thought, you're going to remain here at the moment?

[01:17:05] Iñaki: I'd love to. I'd love to. But one of the challenges that we have foreigners in Hong Kong is that because the change of demographics, it has become a little bit harder, first to attract talent, but also to retain talent in Hong Kong. So we find ourselves, constantly by professionals or senior executives that approach us asking I cannot find a job and I'm rotating and I'm at a time that I'm looking for something else and it's very hard to find jobs where they don't demand Mandarin or Cantonese. Maybe I can use this opportunity to send a message to recruiters and employers that if you think hard, do you really believe that you need to have everyone in your team speaking Mandarin and Cantonese? If you go back to 2015 when I came here, we had multicultural teams in almost every office. And that's what made possible that you would have here people that knew how to deal with countries in the Southeast Asia and far, far, far in Europe.

And if we just focus on our neighbor in the North, in China, We will just become a very small part of what we used to be. So, I'd like to basically continue here. But I think that Hong Kong needs to be open again to the idea that senior executives as well as young, talented from abroad can find this place because they find the type of jobs that they want to

[01:18:32] Colin: That's very, very interesting. I'm optimistic. I think as you quite rightly point out, we're resilient, but the recovery is going to take place, but a lot slower than people expect. There are many things on the horizon with the new regime in the USA. Talk about tariffs, etcetera, which will impact not only Hong Kong, but everything else. 

So Iñaki, it's been fascinating chatting with you. I'm optimistic. You're optimistic. Thank you so much for joining us on Law & More, thank you.

[01:19:04] Iñaki: Thank you very much for having me.