The effect of remuneration committee on directors\u27 remuneration in Hong Kong

According to the Code on Corporate Governance Practices (CG Code), listed firms should be overseen by a board of directors that promotes the success of the firm through effective direction and supervision of the listed firm’s affairs. Remuneration paid to directors should be sufficient to attract and retain directors of a caliber required to run the company successfully, but companies should avoid paying more than is necessary. The board should appoint a remuneration committee consisting wholly or mainly of non-executive directors and chaired by a non-executive director. The role of the committee is to make recommendations to the board on executive director remuneration in all of its forms, drawing on outside advice as necessary. According to the CG Code, the committee should consult with the chairman of the board and/or chief executive officer regarding its proposals relating to the remuneration of other executive directors. However, as many listed firms in Hong Kong are majority-owned by individuals and their families, the positions of the chairman and/or chief executive officer are usually held by family members who can influence the level of remuneration paid to directors. In an effort to assess how well the CG Code works, this study examines whether directors’ remuneration is influenced by independent non-executive directors where the chairman of the board is a family member. Findings show that since the introduction the CG Code, where the number of independent non-executive directors on the remuneration committee is high, the committee acts as means of control, which leads to lower directors’ remuneration than in situations where family members have more influence on remuneration committee decisions

Carboxyl-terminal truncated HBx regulates a distinct microRNA transcription program in Hepatocellular carcinoma development

Background: The biological pathways and functional properties by which misexpressed microRNAs (miRNAs) contribute to liver carcinogenesis have been intensively investigated. However, little is known about the upstream mechanisms that deregulate miRNA expressions in this process. In hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), hepatitis B virus (HBV) X protein (HBx), a transcriptional trans-activator, is frequently expressed in truncated form without carboxyl-terminus but its role in miRNA expression and HCC development is unclear. Methods: Human non-tumorigenic hepatocytes were infected with lentivirus-expressing full-length and carboxyl-terminal truncated HBx (Ct-HBx) for cell growth assay and miRNA profiling. Chromatin immunoprecipitation microarray was performed to identify the miRNA promoters directly associated with HBx. Direct transcriptional control was verified by luciferase reporter assay. The differential miRNA expressions were further validated in a cohort of HBV-associated HCC tissues using real-time PCR. Results: Hepatocytes expressing Ct-HBx grew significantly faster than the full-length HBx counterparts. Ct-HBx decreased while full-length HBx increased the expression of a set of miRNAs with growth-suppressive functions. Interestingly, Ct-HBx bound to and inhibited the transcriptional activity of some of these miRNA promoters. Notably, some of the examined repressed-miRNAs (miR-26a, -29c, -146a and -190) were also significantly down-regulated in a subset of HCC tissues with carboxyl-terminal HBx truncation compared to their matching non-tumor tissues, highlighting the clinical relevance of our data. Conclusion: Our results suggest that Ct-HBx directly regulates miRNA transcription and in turn promotes hepatocellular proliferation, thus revealing a viral contribution of miRNA deregulation during hepatocarcinogenesis. © 2011 Yip et al.published_or_final_versio

Use of Information and Communications Technology in Family Services and Its Perceived Benefits amid the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong—Jockey Club SMART Family-Link Project

Introduction: We examined information and communications technology (ICT) use in family services and its perceived benefits and barriers amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. Methods: We invited all family service social workers of 12 NGOs to complete an anonymous online questionnaire in May 2020 (Part A) and a management representative from each NGO to provide written feedback on ICT use in January 2021 (Part B). Results: In Part A, of 255 respondents (response rate: 67.3%), perceived ICT use in conducting programmes, groups, casework and preventive family programmes showed net increases of 33.9–54.5%; perceived ICT use in different work processes showed net increases of 18.8–48.6%. The three most common perceived benefits were “providing another option to service users” (74.2%), “more convenient service” (60.2%) and “maintaining normal service” (59.7%). In Part B, 12 management representatives consistently reported positive impacts of ICT use on family services. They shared actionable strategies (e.g., ICT skill-related training) and concerns about data privacy and management. Conclusions: ICT use in family services markedly increased amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. It helped make the services more accessible especially when the pandemic restricted face-to-face services

ISIS: A multilingual spoken dialog system developed with CORBA and KQML agents

ISIS, which abbreviates Intelligent Speech for Information Systems, is a trilingual spoken dialog system (SDS) for the financial domain. It handles two dialects of Chinese (Cantonese and Putonghua), as well as English the predominant languages in our region. The system supports spoken language queries regarding stock market information and simulated personal portfolios. Real-time information is retrieved directly from a dedicated Reuters satellite feed. ISIS provides a system test-bed for our work in multilingual speech recognition and generation, speaker authentication, language understanding and dialog modeling. Furthermore, ISIS supports our initial explorations in: (i) CORBA's interoperability and scalability for SDS development; in conjunction with (ii) asynchronous human-computer interaction by delegation to KQML software agents..