Word: hsbc
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...early 1970s while protesting for better treatment of Hong Kong's poor, he became an in-house adviser to the colony's British Governor in the late 1980s. Now he will have to prove he can navigate the bulky $316 billion Asia-Pacific arm of the London-based HSBC Holdings into a booming banking frontier: China. In 2001 the bank became the first foreign commercial bank to buy into a mainland counterpart since the 1949 communist takeover, and it is now the largest foreign financial institution there. But it is limited by regulation to owning just a minority stake...
...TOOK OFFICE. VINCENT CHENG, 56, the first ethnic Chinese Chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the Asia-Pacific arm of HSBC Group, the world's second-largest bank by assets and a symbol of British colonial power; after being named to the position last December; in Hong Kong. Cheng, who grew up in a working-class tenement and suffered from polio as a child, embraced social activism in the early 1970s (he was once arrested while protesting the demolition of a squatter camp) before joining the bank in 1978 and rising rapidly through the ranks. On reporting...
Thirty major private banks, including U.S. giants Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, and European powerhouses ABN Amro, Barclays, HSBC and ING, have so far signed on to the principles. The guidelines cover some 80% of the global-project-financing market, according to Jon Williams, head of sustainability risk management at HSBC. "Everyone is interested in the balance between sustainability and economic development," says Williams. "We believe you can do well and do good...
...terms of overall lending, project financing is a small part of most banks' operations--from 5% to 10% at HSBC, for example--but lending that is environmentally and socially sound can have a huge long-term impact. Underwriters such as Citigroup point to the World Bank--backed pipeline running from Chad's oil fields through Cameroon to the Atlantic. Extensive environmental-impact assessments were carried out before the work got the green light, and oil companies like ExxonMobil have provided compensation and health care to local people whose lives and livelihoods were disrupted. A trust fund designed to give...
Despite those differences, banks and NGOs are likely to keep working together. The reason is simple: socially and environmentally responsible investment makes good business sense. HSBC, Citigroup and ABN Amro all say green issues are increasingly important when they consider funding global projects. "[In the future], the Equator Principles will be seen as a catalyst for how banks conduct themselves in other areas of their business," says ABN Amro's Burrett. If that happens, activists in haz-mat suits will have to find another target...