As the Dragon Boat Festival comes around again, so do its oldest rhythms: the long hulls slicing through water, the steady beat of the drum, a crew pulling as one. It is a festival about resilience and forward drive and about finding a shared cadence with the people sitting beside you in the same boat. This year, ARC Group chose to honour that spirit in the most literal way possible: by getting in the water and racing.

First Stop: Kerry Parkside

On June 13, twenty crews lined up at Jing Tian Lake in Shanghai’s Century Park for the 2026 Kerry Parkside Dragon Boat Race, a centrepiece of the Huamu Street Dragon Boat Festival and Intangible Cultural Heritage Week in Pudong. The field brought together teams from local companies, government offices, schools, and community groups, all chasing the same 200-metre stretch of open water, from the heats through to the final.

For ARC Group, it marked the first time the firm has raced under its own name. More than 80% of the twelve-strong crew came from overseas.

From Guangzhou to Shanghai

In May 2026, during ARC Group’s Annual Global Team Conference at Baiyun Lake in Guangzhou, over 60 colleagues from across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America picked up a paddle for the very first time. That first time out, the strokes did not land together and the rhythm wandered. But for the first time, everyone was sitting in the same boat.

If Guangzhou was the starting line, Shanghai would be the first real race.

The Same Discipline We Bring to a Deal

There is a reason the sport resonates with the people who run capital markets transactions for a living. A dragon boat moves on consensus under pressure. The drummer sets the pace; eight paddlers must commit to the same beat at the same instant. One strokes out of time, and the whole boat loses ground. There is no timeout to regroup; every read and every correction must happen while the boat is still moving.

That is not so different from the reality of executing a cross-border deal. The market window does not wait for a team to align internally. Outcomes turn on how quickly a group can reach agreement under pressure and keep driving toward the line. Execution, in the end, is never about any one person. It is about a team that moves together.

Rooted in Shanghai, Connected to the Community

Huamu is one of Pudong’s most established business districts, and the Huamu Street Dragon Boat Festival uses living cultural heritage as the thread that ties very different organisations across industries and backgrounds to the same stretch of water. For ARC Group, the day was more than a race. It was a chance for a firm that has built its international capital markets advisory practice in Shanghai over many years to deepen its ties to the city and the community around it.

To every teammate who showed up ready to row and everyone who cheered from the shore, you brought the heat, thank you.