45 daily newspapers printed in hong kong and no fewer than 661 registered periodicals. now, of course, some of these publications are what are known as ma ging ( 馬 [UNK] ) or racing papers, and not all of them have their dedicated financial pages. even so, hong kong is remarkably well served by the financial media, and one thing that has never ceased to impress me during my sixteen years as monetary authority has been the quality and dedication of the many people in hong kong who make up the financial media. the many colleagues in the media play an extremely important part in the development of financial markets, and i should like to pay tribute to their professionalism. i feel entitled to use the word " colleagues ", not just because i have enjoyed a very close and productive relationship with the financial media, but also because i too, albeit uninvited and unpaid, have for the past 11 years served as a columnist in several newspapers through my weekly " viewpoint " articles. i should like to thank those newspapers who have faithfully reproduced these articles, week after week, even when the content may not always have been as newsworthy as they may have hoped. ladies and gentlemen, this evening's gala dinner, in recognising excellence in financial services will provide encouragement for the future development of financial markets in the region. it is also an opportunity to celebrate euromoney's 40th anniversary and its long association with hong kong and this region. i should like to offer euromoney heartiest congratulations on its birthday and the very best of wishes for a flourishing future.

not confined to the financial services sector. what i propose to do now is to highlight a couple of key “ soft ” infrastructure that is uniquely important to hong kong ’ s future development as the wealth and asset management hub in asia : ( a ) as we all know, the existence of an inheritance tax or estate duty, even at low rates, is a material impediment to the development of wealth and asset management businesses. back in 1998, the hkma started to lobby the hksar government to abolish the estate duty in hong kong in order to foster hong kong ’ s development as a wealth management centre. the lobbying efforts met with considerable resistance initially but we did not give up and continued with such efforts under the terms of three successive financial secretaries. in 2005, after seven years of relentless appeals, we finally convinced the financial secretary to include the abolition of estate duty proposal in his budget speech. this was followed by the legislative council ’ s passage of the bill implementing the abolition from february 2006 ; ( b ) modernisation of the trust laws : the amendment bill seeking to modernise hong kong ’ s trust laws was passed by the legislative council on 17 july 2013. this was an important milestone to revamp hong kong ’ s antiquated trust regime which had not been substantially reviewed and modified for decades. this is again something that the hkma had advocated and pushed strongly within the government in the past few years so that our trust law regime can catch up with the other financial centres ; ( c ) promotion of islamic finance : the legislative amendments to provide a comparable taxation framework for common types of sukuk vis - a - vis conventional bonds were passed by the legislative council on 10 july 2013. it was a key policy proposal made in the study jointly led by the hkma and the tma in late 2007, following the announcement in the 2007 policy address of the initiative to develop an islamic financial platform in hong kong. last week, hkma also announced jointly with bank negara malaysia ( bnm ) the establishment of a private - sector led joint forum for advancing the development of islamic finance in hong kong, and we are glad to have assistant governor bakarudin ishak of the bnm attending the panel discussion of the summit this afternoon ; ( d ) open - ended investment company ( oeic ) : the hkma has intensively lobbied for a legislative framework and regulatory regime for oeic in hong kong. we were very encouraged that this initiative was announced by the