Asia

Tom joined Gavekal in 2014 from the South China Morning Post, where he wrote the newspaper’s flagship daily Monitor column covering business, finance and economics in Hong Kong, China and the wider world. Before joining the SCMP in 2005, Tom racked up 13 years’ experience as a business journalist working mainly in Europe and Asia for, among others, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Wall Street Journal, and CNBC. He originally began his career as an exploration geologist, but when commodity prices collapsed the last time around, he was forced into journalism as the traditional refuge of the otherwise unemployable. 123

Simon is a financial journalist turned economic researcher. His particular interest is emerging- and frontier- markets which has been the focus of his work at hedge funds based in London and Hong Kong. He has worked as a reporter, columnist and editor for Media outlets that include Bloomberg and the South China Morning Post. At Gavekal, he oversees our Hong Kong-based research team and writes occasionally across a range of topics. He holds an honors degree in economics from Manchester Metropolitan University and is married with a young son.

Udith Sikand joined Gavekal in 2013 as an analyst covering macro-economic and market developments in India and the major Southeast Asian economies. Previously, he worked with investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods as an equity research associate covering Indian and South Korean banks. Prior to KBW, he worked as a research analyst with CreditSights covering Asian sovereigns and credit strategy. Udith holds an undergraduate degree in economics from SRCC, University of Delhi and a Masters degree in International Political Economy from the University of Warwick.

Tom writes about emerging markets, specializing in China and its role in the world. A former journalist, he has reported from a dozen countries in Asia. He has appeared in the Financial Times, Economist, New York Times, Washington Post ​and Wall Street Journal, and on the BBC, CNN and CNBC. Tom holds a first-class degree in English Literature from Oxford, a master's degree in Chinese Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and spent two years studying Chinese at universities in Beijing. He is the author of two acclaimed books. His first, China’s Urban Billion: The Story Behind the Biggest Migration in Human History, was published in 2012 and translated into Chinese. His second, China’s Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road, was published in 2017. After 14 years in China, Tom now lives in Oxford.