Original author: Nancy, PANews

On June 5, Bloomberg published an article saying that as U.S. regulators have increased their scrutiny of Binance in recent months, the regulatory dilemma will make the succession of its CEO more urgent. People familiar with the matter revealed that if Changpeng Zhao resigns, Binance’s new head of the Middle East and North Africa region, Richard Teng, will be a popular candidate to take over as CEO.

At the same time, an anonymous former Binance employee also revealed to CoinDesk that “senior leadership and regulators have concluded after closed-door discussions that Richard Teng is the only leader who can succeed Changpeng Zhao and continue to build the company according to his vision. At the same time, Richard Teng can help bridge the existing gap between the industry and regulators.

In response to this, Richard Teng responded in an interview with CoinDesk that it is too early to speculate that he was trained to replace Zhao Changpeng as the CEO of Binance. His new position is not even a promotion, but just an expansion to help Changpeng Zhao review Responsibility for certain things. At the same time, he also said, “If you look back over the past 18 to 24 months, you can see that Binance has made a significant shift in compliance, but we acknowledge that there have been problems in the past. We hope to resolve all of these in a responsible manner with all parties. policy issues and continue to demonstrate that we are a new organization.”

For a time, this recently promoted Binance executive aroused public curiosity. What is the origin of Richard Teng?

Received 4 promotions after joining the company less than two years ago

Although the name Richard Teng is relatively unfamiliar to the outside world, he was quickly promoted in less than two years after joining the company and recently became the head of all regional markets for Binance outside the United States.

Public information shows that Richard Teng is a 52-year-old Singaporean with a masters degree in applied finance from the University of Western Australia. Before joining Binance, Richard Teng worked for the Monetary Authority of Singapore for 13 years. He served as the Chief Regulatory Officer of the Singapore Securities Exchange (SGX) for nearly 8 years since 2007, responsible for the rule formulation, framework and regulation of listing, trading and clearing. policy, and subsequently served for six years as head of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market.

Judging from more than 20 years of experience in the financial services and regulatory industry, Richard Teng has extensive compliance experience and is therefore considered in reports to be the ideal candidate to help guide Binance through regulatory difficulties. It is worth mentioning that Richard Teng was also selected into the Top 100 Most Influential People in the UAE by Arabian Business. According to the list, during his tenure as ADGM’s FSRA CEO, Richard Teng launched many first-in-class products, including digital banking, venture capital, financial technology regulatory sandbox, private REIT system, manager licensing system and digital asset trading. frame.

In August 2021, Richard Teng joined Binance as regional CEO for Singapore. From December 2021 to October 2022, Richard Teng will serve as the new head of Binance’s Middle East and North Africa region. From November 2022 to April 2023, Richard Teng served as regional director for Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and was appointed to lead all regional markets outside the United States 2 months later. Judging from the timeline, Richard Teng has been promoted four times in less than two years, almost at rocket speed.

Not only that, Richard Teng has recently participated in various activities on behalf of Binance with high frequency, and has been actively operating his own Twitter account since May this year. A whopping 28 of the total 29 tweets have been published since May. It can be seen that after his latest promotion, Richard Teng began to significantly increase his external frequency on behalf of Binance.

Zhao Changpeng’s left is Richard Teng

According to Changpeng Zhaos recent statement on Twitter Space, Richard Teng was introduced by an employee of the Central Bank of Singapore, who decided to hire him two weeks later after talking to him. As for this executive, Binance co-founder He Yi affirmed in a recent interview, “I think he is an experienced professional manager, and his scope has been continuously expanding since he joined Binance. , we all like and recognize Richard.

With regulatory crackdowns in many countries, Dubai becomes the key to Binance’s business expansion?

In recent months, Binance has been subject to regulatory scrutiny from regulatory agencies in the United States, Australia, Canada and other countries. For this reason, the trading platform had to stop providing business to relevant regions. Multiple law enforcement actions have also reduced Binance’s market share. The rate declined. Although Binance’s market share once exceeded half of the market due to the FTX incident, according to the latest data from CCData, the exchange’s market share has dropped by approximately 10.8% since March this year.

For Binance, it has been particularly tested under regulatory pressure in the United States. For example, crypto exchange executives resigned en masse after BitMEX was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Samuel Lim, who served as chief compliance officer at Binance since 2018, left in 2022 and was charged by the SEC with aiding and abetting Binance’s violations earlier this year. Binance has made compliance one of its top priorities for 2023 and has added hundreds of employees to Binance’s compliance department. According to Changpeng Zhao, Binance currently has a compliance team of more than 750 people, most of whom have previous backgrounds in law enforcement and regulatory agencies.

Compared to countries such as the United States, Dubai was once regarded as one of the crypto-friendly countries, attracting thousands of crypto companies. Binance has also embraced Dubai as a new safe haven, not only receiving a virtual asset license from Dubai regulators but also having an office in the country with more than 700 employees. Changpeng Zhao once predicted that Dubai has become one of the centers of global encryption innovation, and Binance’s presence in the city has also grown. He even bought his first house in Dubai to show his support for Dubai.

However, after FTX’s bankruptcy, Dubai, which has always been friendly to the crypto community, began to impose strict scrutiny on cryptocurrency license applicants. In February this year, Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) issued the Virtual Assets and Related Activities Regulations 2023, requiring crypto companies to obtain authorization and relevant licenses to operate in Dubai, covering everything from cybersecurity regulations to compliance and risks Governing standards covering specific activities such as issuance, advisory, custody and exchange services.

A few months later, Bloomberg reported that officials from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), which VARA requires from all international companies seeking licenses, have in recent weeks asked Binance to provide more information about its ownership structure, governance and audit procedures. Similar information. VARA officials are also seeking information on ownership, auditing and board procedures at the Binance Global Group level. This also brings new regulatory challenges to Binance’s layout in Dubai.

“I believe the UAE and Dubai are one of the most progressive governments in the world and can be ahead of the world. Working with the Dubai government, you realize how well this country supports innovation, crypto adoption, and blockchain development , this is helpful because these factors will be the backbone of the future economic sector. We consider how to further support the government and share our expertise and knowledge so that this progressive system can well manage systemic risks, anti-money laundering risk, while also supporting innovation and growth. Richard Teng once said in an interview. For Binance, Dubai-based Richard Teng may be one of the key figures in its full push into the region.