David Webb
David M. Webb (born 29 August 1965) is a British activist investor and retired investment banker based in Hong Kong, recognized for compiling comprehensive public databases on corporate governance and advocating reforms to protect minority shareholders from entrenched interests.[1][2] After a career in finance spanning London and Hong Kong, he retired at age 33 to dedicate himself to independent analysis and activism, founding Webb-site.com in 1998 as a non-profit resource tracking company filings, director appointments, and advisory bodies to highlight conflicts of interest and opacity in the system.[1][3] Webb's work has focused on empirical scrutiny of Hong Kong's stock exchange and corporate practices, pushing for enhanced disclosure rules and challenging practices like connected transactions that favor insiders over public investors.[4] His disclosures have influenced regulatory changes, including improvements in shareholder protections, though he has encountered resistance from influential tycoons and regulators protective of the status quo.[5] In recognition of nearly three decades of contributions to economic transparency, he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2025 King's Birthday Honours.[3][6] Facing terminal metastatic cancer diagnosed in recent years, Webb announced in 2025 plans to shutter Webb-site.com due to the absence of a successor willing to maintain its independence amid Hong Kong's evolving political environment, underscoring challenges to sustaining data-driven oversight against institutional inertia.[7][8] His efforts exemplify a commitment to causal accountability in markets, prioritizing verifiable records over narrative convenience, even as sources from regulated entities warrant scrutiny for potential self-interest.[1]Politics and activism
David Webb (American conservative activist)
David Webb is an American conservative activist, radio host, and Fox News contributor recognized for co-founding TeaParty365, a New York City-based advocacy group focused on fiscal responsibility, in April 2009.[9] As one of the early organizers of the Tea Party movement, Webb has emphasized grassroots involvement in opposing government overreach and promoting limited government principles.[10] He serves as a spokesman for the National Tea Party Federation and has described himself as an activist committed to factual discourse, particularly as an African-American conservative countering narratives of institutional racism.[11] In 2011, Time magazine named him among its "Person of the Year" selections as a representative protester of the Tea Party movement.[12] Born in Jamaica and raised in New Jersey, Webb attended the College of the Holy Cross before entering broadcasting.[13] [14] His media career spans over three decades, beginning in music radio and transitioning to talk formats across markets including Boston, Houston, Dallas, and New York City.[10] Since 2012, he has hosted the daily "The David Webb Show" on SiriusXM's Patriot channel, delivering news analysis and listener call-ins from 9 a.m. to noon Eastern Time.[15] Webb also contributes as an analyst for Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, and Fox Nation's "Reality Check" program, appearing on international outlets such as BBC and CNN International.[16] He has written columns for The Hill and Breitbart News, advocating Tea Party strategies for electoral influence.[17] Beyond TeaParty365, Webb co-founded Reclaim New York, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization aimed at government transparency and citizen education on policy reform.[18] His activism extends to public speaking and media commentary critiquing identity politics and defending constitutional principles, earning recognitions including Newsweek's 2010 list of top Tea Party figures and media awards from groups like the National Police Defense Foundation in 2015.[10] Residing between Miami and New York City with his wife, Astrid, Webb maintains a focus on conservative media production through his company, Webb Media, LLC.[10]David Webb (Hong Kong activist)
David Michael Webb is a British-born activist investor and advocate for corporate transparency based in Hong Kong since 1991.[1] Born on 29 August 1965, he worked as an investment banker, initially for five years in London before joining Barclays in Hong Kong, where he spent much of his career until retiring at age 32 in 1998 to manage his personal portfolio.[1][7] His activism centers on shareholder rights and exposing deficiencies in Hong Kong's corporate governance, particularly on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, through detailed analysis of public data and advocacy for regulatory reforms.[2][19] In 1998, Webb founded Webb-site.com, a non-profit platform that archives public corporate filings, provides governance ratings, and critiques issues such as connected transactions, executive pay, and board independence among Hong Kong-listed companies.[20][7] The site has influenced investor behavior by highlighting risks in underperforming firms, contributing to delistings and improved disclosures; for instance, Webb's campaigns have targeted tycoon-controlled entities with opaque dealings, prompting market-wide scrutiny.[19][4] He proposed the HAMS (Hong Kong Association of Minority Shareholders) framework in the early 2000s, advocating a levy-funded, investor-elected body to drive activism, elements of which informed government consultations on enhancing minority protections.[2] Webb's efforts extend to broader economic transparency, including critiques of civil service post-retirement roles and government-linked entities, amassing a database of over 1,000 reports since 1998.[20] In June 2025, he received the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) from the UK government for nearly three decades of contributions to Hong Kong's financial transparency.[3] However, following a terminal cancer diagnosis announced in 2025, Webb stated in June that he has months to live and has not identified a successor, leading to the site's planned shutdown by October 2025 after 27 years of operation.[19][7] This closure raises concerns about the sustainability of independent shareholder advocacy in Hong Kong amid evolving regulatory and political pressures.[8]David Webb (Kansas politician)
David Lee Webb is an American businessman and former Republican politician who represented Johnson County in the Kansas Legislature.[21][22] Webb served as a state representative for District 27 in the Kansas House of Representatives from 1978 to 1985.[22][23] He represented Stilwell, a suburban area in Johnson County, during a period of Republican influence in Kansas state politics.[21][24] After leaving the House, Webb returned to the legislature in the early 1990s as a state senator for District 11, also in Johnson County, following his successful 1992 campaign.[25][26] His Senate service focused on issues aligned with conservative priorities in a Republican-leaning district, though specific legislative achievements are not prominently documented in public records.[27][21] Beyond elected office, Webb has maintained involvement in Kansas Republican networks, conducting oral history interviews for the Kansas Oral History Project with former GOP figures such as Lt. Gov. Dave Owen and state legislators like George Wingert and Phil Martin.[21][28][29] In his private career, Webb founded and leads Webb & Associates, a firm specializing in auctions, appraisals, and real estate management, with an emphasis on agricultural properties, established in the mid-1980s.[27][22] He has also served on state boards related to land conservation and received awards such as the Rotary Paul Harris Fellow for regional service.[25]David Webb (anti-censorship campaigner)
David Alec Webb (6 March 1931 – 30 June 2012) was a British actor and campaigner against censorship of printed and visual media, particularly laws restricting materials on sexual themes.[30] Born in Luton as the second child and only son of his family, Webb pursued acting roles in television and film, including appearances as an Ogron in the Doctor Who serial Colony in Space (1971), Stot in Blake's 7 (1978), and guest spots in series such as The Bill (1990), Casualty (1992), The Tomorrow People (1994), and Doctors (2002).[31] His on-screen work often intersected with his advocacy, as he used public visibility to challenge moralistic restrictions on artistic expression.[32] In 1976, Webb founded the National Campaign for the Reform of the Obscene Publications Acts (NCROPA), a pressure group aimed at repealing or amending the Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and 1964, which criminalized materials tending to "deprave and corrupt."[33] NCROPA emerged as a direct counter to campaigns by moral campaigners like Mary Whitehouse, who sought stricter controls on pornography and violence in media; Webb positioned the organization as defending civil liberties against state overreach in regulating private consumption.[34] Under his leadership as honorary director, the group lobbied Parliament, distributed bulletins critiquing prosecutions under obscenity laws, and monitored cases involving books, films, and videos.[35] Webb's activism intensified in the 1980s amid proposed expansions of censorship powers. NCROPA opposed the Video Recordings Act 1984, which required classification of video content by the British Board of Film Classification and effectively banned unclassified tapes, arguing it infringed on adult freedoms without empirical justification for harm prevention.[30] He organized court pickets, public confrontations with figures like Whitehouse and Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, and alliances with libertarian outlets such as the Libertarian Alliance.[34] In the 1983 general election, Webb ran as an independent Anti-Censorship candidate in the Finchley constituency, polling against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a platform centered on reforming obscenity laws to prioritize evidence-based limits over subjective moral judgments.[36] Though NCROPA's influence waned by the 1990s with shifting focuses to online censorship, Webb maintained involvement until health declined, dying unmarried and childless at Trinity Hospice in Clapham.[34]Science
David Webb (pharmacologist)
David John Webb is a British physician and clinical pharmacologist specializing in cardiovascular and renal therapeutics. He serves as Professor Emeritus of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the University of Edinburgh, where he previously held the Christison Chair of Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology.[37][38] His work has centered on the development of pharmacological interventions for hypertension and heart failure, including contributions to clinical trials evaluating endothelin receptor antagonists and vasopressin antagonists.[39][40] Webb's research emphasizes the pathophysiology of hypertension and renal disease, with particular focus on arterial stiffness, endothelial function, and the role of vasoactive peptides in vascular regulation. He has authored or co-authored over 960 publications, accumulating more than 46,000 citations, and has led translational studies bridging basic pharmacology to patient outcomes in cardiovascular science.[40] As head of the Hypertension and Renal Section within the British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh, he has advanced understanding of endothelial dysfunction and its implications for therapeutic targets.[38][41] In professional leadership, Webb served as President of the British Pharmacological Society from 2016 to 2018 and as Honorary President of the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.[42][43] He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to clinical pharmacology and therapeutics.[42] Webb has also contributed to policy and education, establishing clinical research facilities at Edinburgh and advocating for integrated pharmacovigilance in drug development.[43][44]David Webb (mathematician)
David L. Webb is an American mathematician specializing in algebraic K-theory, differential geometry, and global analysis. He served as a professor of mathematics at Dartmouth College until his retirement, contributing to research on topics including isospectral manifolds and transplantation techniques in Riemannian geometry.[45][46][47] Webb received his PhD in mathematics from Cornell University in 1983, with a dissertation titled Grothendieck Groups of Dihedral and Quaternion Group Rings supervised by Kenneth S. Brown. This work focused on algebraic K-theory applied to group rings, exploring the structure of Grothendieck groups for specific finite group algebras.[48][49] In spectral geometry, Webb collaborated with Carolyn Gordon and Scott Wolpert to construct counterexamples to Mark Kac's 1966 conjecture, "Can one hear the shape of a drum?", which asks whether the eigenvalues of the Laplacian on a domain uniquely determine its shape up to isometry. Their 1992 result produced non-isometric bounded plane domains with identical Dirichlet spectra, proving that the frequencies alone do not always suffice to identify the shape. This was achieved using Riemannian orbifolds and deformation techniques, with the domains visualized as pairs of irregular polygons sharing the same fundamental tones but differing geometrically. The findings appeared in key publications, including Inventiones Mathematicae and popularized explanations in American Scientist.[50][47] Webb's broader research includes applications of K-theory to geometric problems, such as isospectral deformations of nilmanifolds and global analytic invariants on manifolds. His publications, cited over 1,600 times, bridge algebraic and geometric methods, with works on topics like the Novikov conjecture and rigidity in differential geometry.[47][51]D. A. Webb (botanist)
David Allardice Webb (12 August 1912 – 26 September 1994) was an Irish botanist renowned for his work in systematic botany, plant taxonomy, and Irish flora. He held the position of Professor of Systematic Botany at Trinity College Dublin from 1966 until his retirement in 1979, after which he maintained an honorary chair until his death.[52] Born in Dublin to mathematician George Randolph Webb and physician Ella Webb, he received his early education at Charterhouse School in Surrey before graduating with first-class honours in Natural Sciences from Trinity College Dublin in 1935.[53] He earned PhDs from Trinity College Dublin in 1937 and the University of Cambridge in 1939.[52] Webb joined the Botany Department at Trinity College Dublin as an assistant lecturer during Ireland's "The Emergency" (World War II period), advancing to full-time roles amid wartime constraints. He succeeded H. H. Dixon as Professor of Botany in 1949, serving in various professorial capacities including Professor of Plant Biology (1949–1954) and University Professor of Botany (1954–1965) before his appointment in systematic botany.[52] As curator of the college herbarium from 1950 to 1983, he oversaw significant collections from Europe, South Africa, Australia, and other regions, emphasizing taxonomic documentation.[54] He also served as President of the Royal Irish Academy from 1967 to 1970, influencing scientific policy in Ireland.[55] Webb died in a road accident near Oxford on 26 September 1994 while on holiday in England.[52] His research focused on plant distribution patterns, including calcicole (calcium-loving) and calcifuge (calcium-avoiding) species, as well as the ecology and phytogeography of western Ireland, such as Connemara and the Burren.[52] A specialist in the genus Saxifraga, he established a key collection of European saxifrages at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and contributed extensively to mapping distributions via the Atlas Florae Europaeae.[53] Webb played a foundational role in Flora Europaea, co-founding the editorial committee in 1954 and editing volumes on geographical distributions across its publications from 1964 to 1980 (with revisions to 1993).[52] He co-led the International Phytogeographical Excursion to Ireland in 1949, fostering European collaboration on Irish botany. In 1982, he received the Boyle Medal from the Royal Dublin Society for his contributions.[52] Webb's major publications include:- An Irish Flora (1943, with seven editions; the seventh's proofs were completed shortly before his death), a concise field guide that became a standard reference for identifying Irish wild plants.[53]
- Flora of Connemara and the Burren (1983, co-authored with Mary J. P. Scannell), detailing regional flora based on extensive fieldwork.[52]
- Saxifrages of Europe (1989, with Richard Gornall), a monograph on the genus synthesizing taxonomic and distributional data.[52]
- Contributions to Trinity College Dublin, 1592–1952 (1952, as compiler and editor), extending to botanical history.[52]