Christophe Bernasconi joined the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in September 1997 as secretary. He became first secretary in May 2000 (first in rank in December 2001), deputy secretary general in July 2011, and secretary general on July 1 2013. He holds a law degree from Fribourg University in Switzerland (magna cum laude; bilingual German and French), an LLM degree from McGill University in Montreal (Canada) in comparative law (with a Master's Thesis on Oligopolies in unfair competition law), and a doctoral degree from Fribourg University (summa cum laude).  Prior to assuming his function as secretary general, he had primary responsibility for all work relating to the legal and administrative cooperation Conventions (Apostille, Service, Evidence, Access to Justice) and the finance law Convention (Securities), and was also closely involved in the work relating to the family law and commercial law Conventions. He has been responsible for numerous special commission, experts and working group meetings. He is also the designer and principal administrator of the groundbreaking and successful electronic Apostille Program (e-APP). 

Jayant Menon is Lead Economist in the Office for Regional Economic Integration at ADB, where he works on trade, international investment and development issues, and leads the Trade Team. He holds adjunct appointments with the Australian National University, University of Nottingham, UK and Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, and serves on the Advisory Board of the University of Nottingham Campus in Malaysia. Prior to joining ADB, he worked as an academic in Australia for more than a decade, mainly at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. He is the author or co-author of more than one hundred academic publications, mostly on trade and development, and particularly as they relate to Asia. 

Eleazar E. Ricote is Deputy Executive Director at the Philippine Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) Center. He is specifically managing the Center’s various units tasked with PPP capacity building, policy formulation and evaluation, project review and evaluation, contract/project monitoring and management, knowledge and information systems management, and public communications.   Eli is the main resource person of the Center’s capacity building programs for implementing agencies and local government units, and is lead officer managing technical assistance programs (TA) to the PPP Center from development partners/agencies such as ADB, WB, JICA, etc. He has more than 15 years of professional experience in BOTs and PPPs - in all aspects of policy, process and institutional review and reforms, capacity building and knowledge management, project development and structuring, procurement, project and contract management and monitoring.  He is a recognized PPP professional in the country and in the region. He has represented the PPP Center in numerous national and international PPP conferences and workshops on infrastructure and PPP policies institutions and programs, project opportunities, challenges, best practices and innovations. In 2013, he was panel chair of the first session of the APEC 2nd workshop on infrastructure in Indonesia. In 2014, he chaired and moderated the session on country PPP programs during the first ASEAN PPP networking forum in Manila. Eli has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master’s degree in public administration from the University of the Philippines (UP) where he is also currently finishing his doctorate degree in public governance. He completed PPP courses on concessions contracts from the UNESCAP. In 2014, he also completed an executive course on infrastructure and PPPs from the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Axel Winter is global head of process & data architecture at Standard Chartered Bank where he started out gaining ownership of key transactional banking platforms. In the past, Winter has worked as CTO for Cisco Systems, global chief architect at GE Capital, and as a consulting executive for Deloitte and Accenture pioneering their cloud and e-business. In the earlier nineties Winter ran a startup which aimed to implement internet and e-businesses in various countries across the Asia region.

Brahma in his Global Head of Markets Tax role is responsible for KPMG’s key accounts programme for KPMG Tax globally. This involves developing strategies and supporting lead partners with key tax developments globally to ensure KPMG provides consistent quality services to our key clients. In his Regional Partner role, Brahma  provides regional support to MNC clients, leads the Asia Pacific Tax Centre which is responsible for developing regional thought leadership, publications and webinars.  Brahma led the publication of KPMG”s ASEAN Tax Guide which was released recently. Brahma has extensive experience on all tax matters relating to corporate clients including multinational companies. He has advised extensively on cross border transactions as well as being involved in all aspects of tax policy and compliance management.