Ivan Ko

Ivan is currently the Chairman of RECAS Group, China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong and International Chapter and Panel of Judges of the China Property Awards for 2014 and 2015.  Ivan is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Grand China Fund which was a pioneer of private equity real estate fund in the mainland China.  Ivan is a Fellow Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

He has two decades of real estate development and real estate finance experience in Hong Kong, mainland, Macau, US and UK.  Before Recas, Ivan was the Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Asset Management of two listed financial institutions – SW Kingsway Capital Holdings Limited and Value Convergence Holdings Limited, in which, he was to set up real estate fund for the China and Macau market.

Prior to that, Ivan was the Chairman & CEO of a mortgage services company he set up in JV with the International Finance Corporation (The World Bank), Deutsche Bank, Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) and other institutional investors.  During that period, he helped the newly set up China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) in standardization of residential mortgage application and underwriting process.  Also, he was appointed by CBRC to draft the first “Real Estate Lending Guidelines for Commercial Banks” and was promulgated.  He has made significant contributions to the policy exploration of asset securitization in China. 

In the 90s, he was the general manager of several real estate and land development projects in Beijing, among others, two office development projects in Beijing Finance Street, a land development project in 2nd Ring Road East. Subsequently, he took up a senior management position in a Hong Kong listed developer overseeing a portfolio of development projects and rental income properties in Hong Kong and a residential development project in Beijing and a residential project in Dalian.

Ivan started his real estate career with marketing of Beijing projects several years after he graduated with a business degree from Chinese University of Hong Kong.  He later studied the Real Estate Development Master Degree course in University of Hong Kong.  He also attended the Real Estate Finance Program of the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania and the School of Mortgage Banking of America. 

Ivan was the Founding Chairman of China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong Chapter and was re-elected the Chairman in September 2012 and October 2014. He was also a Director of the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute for several years.  He was also an adviser to some government bodies including the Personal Data (Privacy) Advisory Committee in Hong Kong and the China Banking Regulatory Commission in the first few years of this millennium.