David Webb is a shareholder activist and corporate-governance campaigner in Hong Kong. He moved to the city in 1991 for what was intended as a two-year stint and never left. Before arriving he had a career in investment banking.
As a teenager in Britain, Webb got his hands on the ZX Spectrum computer (launched in 1982) and before turning 18 wrote a book, "Supercharge Your Spectrum", on machine-code tricks. He used the royalties to buy shares, cycling to his bank in Oxford to place orders in London.
By the time of the Asian financial crisis in 1998, Webb had made enough money to retire. In his early 30s he began campaigning to improve Hong Kong's corporate governance through his website (webb-site.com) and a newsletter that now attracts over 30,000 subscribers.
When he started, Hong Kong's corporate governance was, in his words, "lousy". Corporate reporting was slow: shareholders had to wait four months for a two-page summary of yearly results and another month for the annual report. Shareholder meetings were fast and perfunctory, with important motions often passed on a show of hands regardless of how many shares each hand represented. Big business dominated the legislature and the listing committee that sets rules for stockmarket companies.
In 2003 he exploited a wrinkle in company law inherited from Britain, which allowed five shareholders to demand a formal poll on company resolutions. He bought ten shares in each of the companies in the Hang Seng index, dividing them between himself, his wife and three firms he owned. This gave him the foothold to oblige companies to conduct proper polls: one share, one vote. He also threatened to publish the results himself if they did not. The extra five shares allowed him to appoint proxies to appear at meetings, and he offered those five places to the press, which was otherwise barred from many meetings.
At Webb's urging, Hong Kong's regulator began enforcing the rule that listed companies must disclose "significant investments", including shareholdings in other firms. Using those disclosures, he mapped out a web of holdings among 50 firms he dubbed the Enigma Network. Companies in the network might borrow from one another on advantageous terms with no intention to repay, or dilute the stakes of independent investors by issuing shares snapped up at a discount by insiders. One umbrella-maker in the network issued 75bn shares. In 2017, six weeks after he published his map, the shares of many Enigma firms crashed.
Webb fought a rear-guard action against weighted voting rights, which allow firms to issue special shares carrying more clout. He feared this would further entrench tycoons, allowing their control to exceed their ownership stake. Hong Kong's exchange, however, was keen to attract Chinese tech companies led by celebrity founders.
Webb, who is battling cancer, gave a farewell address at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong in May 2025, reflecting philosophically on his achievements.
All things being equal, you are bound to lose.