It was almost 28 years after Kalok Chan left the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a fresh-faced graduate that he returned to its business school in 2014.
This time it was not as a student or even a professor, but as its newly appointed dean. “It was like returning home,” says the amiable finance professor.
The offer of the deanship at the school was not the first time CUHK had tried to lure Prof Chan back to teach at his alma mater. “When I finished my PhD [in finance at Ohio State University] I had an offer from CUHK but stayed in the US,” he says. “I wanted to do serious research and US schools provided a very good research environment. I spent six or seven years in the US before going back to Hong Kong.”