Fernando Zanet is Director of the Technical Committee at PwC Argentina. His primary responsibility is to analyze and research technical accounting and auditing issues and provide technical support to other members of the firm. Mr. Zanet has extensive experience in auditing public companies under international auditing standards (he works at PwC Argentina for 25 years).

Since 2019, Mr. Zanet has served as a member of the Audit Committee of the Accounting and Assurance Standards Committee, supervised by FACPCE, the country's professional accounting organization. He is also Technical Secretary in FACPCE since 2023 and member of the Commission of Companies that operate in local public offering in the Professional Council of Economic Sciences of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.

Mr. Zanet was an advisor in the "First Initiative - Roadmap for Strengthening Accounting and Auditing in Honduras-" for the World Bank Group. He is also a professor of Auditing at the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA) and at the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE) and he has written articles and books on auditing.

In 2014, May Tan became the first female CEO of Standard Charted Bank (Hong Kong) Limited (“SCBHK”) in the bank’s 150-year history. Before retiring in 2017, she founded and championed the bank’s Women’s Network and served as its global sponsor for D&I. Prior to joining SCBHK, she served as the CEO of Cazenove Asia and was the first female partner at Cazenove and Co’s then 175-year history.

Since retiring in 2017, May has focused on board and leadership positions: she currently serves on the Board of CLP Holdings, Manulife Financial and JP Morgan China Income and Growth PLC. She has also served on the HSBC Insurance Board and the Link Asset Management Board. She has been a member of the Advisory Council of the Malaysian Chamber since 2019 and started the Women’s Network at the chamber in 2020.

Over the past 20 years, May has also made significant contributions to Hong Kong through numerous public roles. In 2016, she was the Chairperson of the Hong Kong Association of Banks, and Director of the Hong Kong Interbank Clearing Limited. In the same year, she was a member of the Exchange Fund Advisory Committee Sub-committee on Currency Board Operations of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and a member of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.

May is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants. May received two awards from the American Chamber in HK: firstly “Woman Professional of the Year” award in 2015 and “Woman on Board of the Year” in 2020. In 2023, she was named a “Women of Our Time” by the South China Morning Post 2023. May is the co-founder of ACcelerate, a leadership program which was founded with the core purpose of bridging the gap in senior female representation at the C-suite and accelerate the progression of female talent to senior leadership roles

Ruth Forbes joined IFAC’s Professional Accountants in Business (PAIB) Advisory Group in January 2024. She was nominated by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA).

Ruth Forbes is President and CEO of FortisTCI in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) and is one of the few female CEOs in the utility sector serving the Caribbean region. Under her leadership, FortisTCI is focused on achieving a supportive regulatory environment to transition to a greener, smarter energy future. 

Prior to assuming the leadership role, Mrs. Forbes was Senior Vice President of Corporate Services, Chief Financial Officer, and Company Secretary and has 17 years of experience in utilities. She has been instrumental in driving transformative change and innovation, having had oversight of several business functions, including finance, internal audit, legal, information technology, customer service, corporate communications, human resources, and supply chain management.
 
Mrs. Forbes has a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Barry University. She holds the Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA) designations. Mrs. Forbes also completed the Directors Education Program and received the ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors through the University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management.
 
She serves as a Director on the boards of FortisOntario and Fortis Belize Limited and is also a Director on the board of The Caribbean Electric Utility Services Corporation (CARILEC). She has served for almost three years as the Governor’s Appointed Member to the Public Accounts Committee of the Turks and Caicos Islands.
 
Mrs. Forbes is a devout philanthropist and founder of “Jewels Ablaze”, a not-for-profit organization that empowers and supports girls and women.

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM CET 

Charles Xuereb became a member of the Professional Accountants in Business Advisory Group in 2024. He was nominated by the Malta Institute of Accountants. He is CEO of Trident Estates Plc.

Charles started off his professional career with PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor.  In 1995, he joined Simonds Farsons Cisk plc (“SFC”), a company listed on the Malta Stock Exchange, as Chief Accountant of a subgroup operating franchised foods outlets (Pizza Hut©, Burger King©, KFC© and TGIF©). Subsequently, he was appointed SFC’s Group Financial Services Manager and in 2004, following the acquisition of the food importation arm, he was assigned the key task of integrating the newly acquired company’s finance systems within the Group.  He was appointed Financial Controller whilst retaining the overall finance responsibility of the franchised foods business.

In 2005, Charles was appointed SFC’s Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO) that included the responsibility for the Group’s overall financial management, direction and governance as well as the Group’s Credit Control, Information Technology and Business Services.  He also served as a member of the Group Executive Board and sat on the Board of ten companies within the SFC Group.

In 2017, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Trident Estates plc, a property group that was spun-off as a separate listed entity on the Malta Stock Exchange in 2018.  He spearheaded the development of Trident Park, a €66 million green office campus developed on a historic site, a landmark Art Deco industrial facility, creating a space that embraces both contemporary design and state-of-the-art technology while also preserving and even celebrating the original site’s heritage and context, developing 43% of the developable land available.

Charles is a Certified Public Accountant and a Fellow of the Malta Institute of Accountants. Elected in 2013, he is President of the Malta Association of Credit Management. He is also the Deputy Chair of the Professional Accountants in Business Group within the Malta Institute of Accountants, and forms part of the Disciplinary Appeals Pool within the said institute.

Charles holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in Accountancy from the University of Malta.

The objectives of the project team are to:

Mr. Jamal Milhem has joined the IFAC PAO Development & Advisory Group (PAOD&AG) in January 2018 for the first term 2018-2020 and was reelected for the second term 2021-2023. 

Mr. Milhem is currently the Executive Director and a partner of TAGI in Palestine and a member of the TAGORG Executive Management Council from 2015-2022 (TAGI is an International Audit firm, Member of FOF and one of TAGORG firms with more than 100 offices worldwide). He has more than 30 years of experience in public accounting and advisory services in different countries in TAGI and TAGORG. In addition, he has more than 8 years of experience in higher education in different universities in Palestine related to teaching and development of accounting education programs.

Mr. Milhem has joined the Palestinian Association of Certified Public Accountants (PACPA) in 1997 (PACPA is a national PAO and an IFAC member), and he has been serving as a board member since 2003. He was elected as vice-president of PACPA from 2010 to 2016, reelected as a vice president since 2018-2020 and elected as PACPA president for the years 2021-2022. He also chaired different committees in the PACPA such as the Code of Ethics Committee and the Quality Assurance Committee. Furthermore, he has been elected as a board member of IASCA since 2011, (IASCA is an accounting organization working across the MENA region and an IFAC member). Mr. Milhem was a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, AICPA – Montana State (USA) from 2000 till 2011. Mr. Milhem also served as a member of many other national professional committees, e.g., National Team for AML and risk assessment, National Palestinian WTO Accession Team, Steering Committee for National Team for Transparency and licensing committees in the Palestinian Capital Market Authority i.e., financial analyst, financial consultant, investment consultant and IPO manager.

Mr. Milhem has earned his Bachelor’s degree in accounting and auditing in 1992, and his Master degree in business administration in 1994 from the University of Poona, Symbiosis College, India. He joined a PHD Accounting and Finance program in the Arab American University, Palestine in 2022.  He has obtained his CPA certification from the Montana State Board of Public Accountants – USA in 1998.

Mr. Qiang Zhang became the technical advisor for Liang Yang on December 2023.

He is currently serving as the senior technical staff of Accounting Regulatory Department, the Ministry of Finance, China, responsible for setting Chinese government accounting standards.

Mr. Zhang started his career in the Ministry of Finance in 2020, and he actively participated in government accounting standard reform in China.

Mr. Zhang graduated from Renmin University of China with a Ph.D in management (accounting major).