Hong Kong

After its painful foray into the American subprime market, HSBC is now re-focusing on Hong Kong in emerging markets.

In HSBC's plan to develop more business in Hong Kong Mark McCombe was assigned to take over as region's CEO.

HSBC encourages customers to undertake capital investment in projects that have a positive environmental impact with its Green Financing product.

A Hong Kong businessman bought RMB-denominated bonds out of the renminbi equivalent of US$2.19 million he received via the renminbi trade.

Asset-liability management (ALM) issues facing life insurers in Asia have grown in depth and scale since the 2008 financial crisis. What are the options given that traditional ALM techniques are much less efficient in this post-crisis world?Life insurance policies are designed to provide peace of mind. Yet the business of selling policies is a big gamble these days for life insurance companies, confronted with asset-liability management (ALM) issues, notably those of duration gap, negative interest spread and balance-sheet volatility due to the spike in long-term volatility across most asset classes since the 2008 financial crisis.

BOCHK expands business of its RMB services by tapping Indonesian bank BCA.

Wing Hang Bank blames unemployment and shrinking trade for its 45.4 percent decrease in profits for the first half of 2009.

HSBC has completed a mandatory tender offer for the remaining 10.11 percent of the Bank Ekonomi shares held by the general public.

Fubon Bank and its subsidiaries reported a net profit of US$13 million for the first six months ended 30 June 2009. The global financial crisis and the ensuing recession that emerged from the fourth quarter of 2008 continued to weigh heavily on Hong Kong's economy and had negatively impacted on the Bank's earnings.

HSBC Chairman Stephen Green says the bank has passed the bottom in the cycle in financial markets as the bank saw net income fall over 50 percent to $3.35 billion.

And it never ends. Just a week after major banks announced they would make good on some Lehman mini bond losses, it has emerged that a 77-year-old lady lost $32 million buying products from a couple of UBS Private Bankers.

A dual currency co-branded credit card which uses both RMB and HKD as the settlement currencies is now available in Hong Kong.

HSBC increased its SME loan fund by US$516 million to US$2.064 billion, to accommodate applications of Hong Kong's loan schemes.

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited has appointed Iain J Mackay, 47, as its new Chief Financial Officer, effective 1 September 2009. He succeeds Edgar Ancona, 57, who will take up Mr Mackay’s position as CFO of HSBC’s North American operations. Both these appointments are subject to remaining internal approvals.

Standard Chartered Bank Hong Kong has completed the first cross-border trade settlement transactions in RMB. This is following the official signing of the pilot programme with Bank of China Shanghai and Bank of China Hong Kong.

Bank of China HK Limited conducted the first RMB remittance transaction in Hong Kong, which was made for the Shanghai Electric Hong Kong Co. Ltd.