Adam Williams is currently Chief Representative of the Jardine Matheson Group in China. He was born and grew up in Hong Kong and speaks fluent Chinese.
He graduated from Oxford University in 1975 and after pursuing his Mandarin studies at the Hong Kong Chinese University and the Taipei Lanuages Institute, he worked in Hong Kong for the South China Morning Post as a journalist (1978-1979). From 1980 to 1984 he was Editor and Head of Research at the Sino-British Trade Council in London, leaving in 1985 to be the representative of GEC Marconi Avionics Ltd in Beijing. He has lived and worked in Mainland China ever since. In 1986 he joined Jardine Matheson & Co to become its Chief Representative in Shanghai. In 1989 he returned to Beijing to run Jardine Matheson Special Projects Ltd, which included the agency for GEC-Marconi Avionics. In 1990 this agency was extended to cover the whole of the GEC-Marconi Group, and until 1994 Adam was the Chief Representative of GEC-Marconi in China, on secondment from Jardine Matheson.
In 1995 Adam became the Chief Representative in Beijing of the merchant bank, Jardine Fleming, which had opened its office there the year before. Building up JF’s business and its contacts with the Central Government, Adam was promoted in 1997 to be the China Country Head for Jardine Fleming , and this was a job that he maintained until Jardine Fleming’s merger with J P Morgan Chase in 2000. At the beginning of 2000, Adam was asked to take on the representation of the whole Jardine Matheson Group in China. He is currently involved in all the Group’s activities from hotels, real estate, private investment, insurance broking, construction, automotive, retail and distribution to airport services and shipping.
During his 22 years living in China, Adam has worked and has contacts in a large variety of industries, including the high tech sector and national defence, retail and logistics, financial services – securities and insurance broking, commodities trading, engineering and construction, building materials and petrochemicals. Adam was awarded the O.B.E. (Officer of the British Empire) for his services to business between Britain and China, after having served for four years as Vice Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in China (1992-1996) and two years as Chairman (1996-1998). He was Chairman of the Securities Working Group at the European Chamber of Commerce in China (1998-2000) and later became a director of the EU China Financial Services Advisory Group.
