As CEO of the Hong Kong Jockey Club since 2007, Winfried Engelbrecht-Bresges heads Hong Kong’s biggest taxpayer, one of the world’s top 10 charitable donors, and arguably the city’s most important organisation outside the government. Before taking on the top role, he had been the club’s executive director of racing since 2000, after joining as director of racing two years before.

Originally from Germany, Engelbrecht-Bresges spent six years as CEO of the governing body of German horse racing and breeding, where he had the challenging experience of integrating the racing industry of the former East and West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since 2021, he has been chairman of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities, only the second person in the role in the organisation’s history, effectively putting him in charge of the horseracing industry worldwide. In recent years he has been an important advocate for the sport’s embrace of change, particularly in areas such as its adoption of technology and commitment to sustainability.

He was also a director of the company that managed the operations of the 2008 Olympic equestrian events in Hong Kong; and is chairman of the Asian Racing Federation and a member of the advisory board of the CHIO Aachen World Equestrian Festival, as well as an executive committee member and professor of practice for the Hong Kong Management Association.

He also owns a collection of horses of his own, stabled in France. Before starting his career in racing, he appeared as a professional footballer while still a student.