David Webb, who has died aged 60, was an activist investor, a seeker of truth in the murky shoals of the Hong Kong stock market and an advocate for freedom in the territory’s increasingly repressed political climate.
A mathematician and computer games designer in his youth, Webb was a thorn in the side of Hong Kong’s establishment as the publisher of Webb-site.com, a compendious and accessible database of information on companies, directors, controlling owners and cross-shareholdings as well as public bodies, the judiciary and many other aspects of local life.
As a spotter of undervalued stocks, meanwhile, he amassed a personal fortune by outperforming the Hang Seng index on average by 12 percentage points per year (in his own calculation) between 1995 and 2018. For some years he also published an annual single-stock Christmas tip which did even better for those who followed it.
But his primary drive was as a campaigner. Having bought a share in every Hang Seng company, he opposed any manoeuvre by the market’s big players that disadvantaged smaller punters and fought successfully for a shift to “poll voting” rather than decision-making by show of hands at shareholders’ meetings.
One of his bravest investigations, published by Webb-site in 2017 as “The Enigma Network: 50 Stocks Not To Own”, detailed crossholdings in a large group of connected companies, many of whose shares plunged as a result of the revelations. Earlier, he had taken on the might of the Li family, Hong Kong’s richest, by demanding transparency as to how one of their companies was granted land to develop the Cyberport business park without a formal tender process.
As to politics, Webb made clear his support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and shone a spotlight on cosy dealings between tycoons and Beijing-approved politicians. “In many ways, he was the Hong Kong government’s nightmare,” wrote a fellow activist, “a brilliant investor who was able to articulate the relationship between free markets and a broader concept of civil and political freedom.”
David Michael Webb was born in London on August 29 1965. Adopted by a couple from Leicester – Michael Webb, an economics lecturer, and his wife Veronica, an optician – he spent part of his childhood in Thailand, where his father took a job with the UN advising public utilities. He was educated at an international school in Bangkok run by American nuns which – he later observed, “probably helped inform my atheism”.
Science and mathematics became his passions. In his teens he wrote games for the pioneering Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer and published a user’s handbook, Supercharge Your Spectrum (1983). He went on to read maths – and start dabbling in shares – at Exeter College, Oxford, before embarking on a career in investment banking with Barclays de Zoete Wedd in London.
Having moved to BZW’s Hong Kong office in 1991, Webb was one of a team who left in due course to join a joint venture between NatWest and the Wheelock real estate group. Already wealthy from private investing, he stepped out in 1998 to focus his energies on the Webb-site project.
His analytical skills were recognised as a long-serving member of the takeovers and mergers panel of the Securities and Futures Commission. He was also elected in 2003 as an independent director of the parent company of the Hong Kong stock exchange but resigned in 2008 in protest at what he saw as government interference and lack of care for investors.
In essence, no corporate stitch-up was exempt from his scrutiny. Even in the exclusive Hong Kong Club, of which he was a devoted member, he was capable of stirring constitutional trouble. But behind the intensity and acerbic willingness to offend was a caring friend to those who knew him best.
In 2018, he told a student audience that he believed that by the time Hong Kong’s status as a “special administration region” expires in 2047, “China will be an open, democratic and truly prosperous country, [and] I hope to be around to see it.”
He was robbed of that hope by a diagnosis in 2020 of metastatic prostate cancer, which he announced to his 28,000 Webb-site followers with: “Unfortunately, there are going to be some changes around here”. Managing his treatments with the same forensic focus he brought to investment, he continued fighting his causes for as long as he was able – though more cautious in the last stage for fear that his family’s assets might be seized.
At Exeter College, Webb endowed a tutorial fellowship in computer science and a prize for academic excellence. He had also hoped Hong Kong University would allow him to endow a Webb Centre for Public Transparency but the proposal was rejected.
In last year’s birthday honours he was appointed MBE “for services to raising standards of corporate economic governance, particularly in Hong Kong”. He is survived by his wife Karen and their two sons.
David Webb, born August 29 1965, died January 13 2026