William Bratton has 20 years' experience in Asia in both management consultancy and investment banking. He was initially based in Singapore, where he worked as a strategy consultant specialising in the telecom and media sectors. He then joined Deutsche Bank in Hong Kong, where he quickly became a top-ranked equity analyst. He most recently ran HSBC's Asian equity research department between 2014 and 2019, where he oversaw a significant improvement in product quality and client traction. He has extensive networks across Asia, especially within financial institutions, and has seen first-hand many of the region's evolving geopolitical, financial and economic dynamics.

He was trained as an economic geographer with a PhD from the University of Cambridge and a first-class degree from the London School of Economics. He is studying for his second doctorate at the University of Oxford on the geography of finance.