With your help, the final result will be a compilation of those people who, from the eve of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1996 to the regional bull markets ten years later, have left scars or bouquets on Asia's financial and economic landscape.
Some are obvious: the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation of Malaysian prime-minister Dr. Mahathir and billionaire financier George Soros about the fate of the ringgit is already the stuff of legends.
Richard LiÆs takeover of Hong Kong Telecom at the height of the tech bubble, and his subsequent debacle earlier this month, have also entered local folklore.
In between, we have private equity pioneers making billions in Korea; the regionÆs first large-scale non-performing loan (NPL) disposals; ChinaÆs massive privatisation programme, banking reform, capital markets liberalisation and the renminbi revaluation; Chaebols being dismantled and their leaders jailed; and widespread corporate and banking cleanups in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
We also have Lenovo buying out IBMÆs PC division; CNOOCÆs failed bid for Unocal, and a host of other events which have put Asia firmly on the map.
There are the likes of Mervyn Davies and Stuart Gulliver, who re-engineered Standard CharteredÆs commercial banking and HSBCÆs investment banking units respectively; elite teams at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading their companies to new heights in the region; Chinese entrepreneurs making hay with Nasdaq listings such as Baidu.com and Suntech; and the leaders of key Southeast Asian companies like Siam Commercial Bank and Siam Cement restructuring the corporate landscape.
There is also a selection of influential expats who have made Asia their home û think Frank Sixt at Hutchison and Christopher Young at PLDT.
Naturally, there are plenty of others we have missed, and this is your chance to nominate your hero - or villain - of the past decade.
What are the parameters we will be considering?
-People, within the sphere of finance and economics and within Asia ex-Japan, who have been involved û for good or bad - in events whose repercussions are still being felt.
-People who have had an effect beyond their domestic economy or market.
-People who have been involved in historic events such as the privatisation of state assets and cross-border M&A û and who have introduced sophisticated new financial tools to the region in the process, whether leveraged buy-outs, debt market instruments or derivative products.
-People who have changed the regionÆs financial and economic infrastructure, whether by knocking the Thai and Korean currencies off their pegs to the US dollar, or by trying to pick up the pieces afterwards.
-Hedge fund managers, institutional investors or other key players who in recent years have been instrumental in bringing international money back into Asia, fuelling the region's revival after the cleanup from the financial crisis.
-People who have helped modernise Asian corporate governance and who have battled corruption, such as David Webb in Hong Kong, minority rights activists in Korea and CaijingÆs feisty editor Hu Shuli in China.
ItÆs all up for grabs. HereÆs your chance to immortalise, or make forever notorious, the people you feel most deserve it.
Nominees, together with a sentence or two to explain their significance, should be emailed to [email protected] by August 31.
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