Q You have had a representative office in Hong Kong since 1996. Why upgrade it to a bank branch now
A The disadvantage of not having a bank licence here was that we couldn't run a Hong Kong dollar book. We couldn't quote prices to take deposits and to sell deposit-type papers in the Asian time zone. We tried quoting prices from our London office for some time with staff coming in at 1am. But we found our Asian clients are more comfortable dealing with people in the same time zone.
Q How big is your operation in Hong Kong
A At the moment we have around ú1 billion $1.43 billion in...
