Abbey National upgrades operations in Hong Kong

FinanceAsia spoke to D Gareth Jones, wholesale banking managing director of UK-based Abbey National, about plans to use Hong Kong as a hub to grow its Asian business.

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...

FinanceAsia has updated its subscription model.

Registered readers now have the opportunity to read 5 articles from our award-winning website for free.

To obtain unlimited access to our award-winning exclusive news and analysis, we offer subscription packages, including single user, team subscription (2-5 users), or office-wide licences.

To help you and your colleagues access our proprietary content, please contact us at [email protected], or +(852) 2122 5222

Article limit is reached.

Hello! You have used up all of your free articles on FinanceAsia.

To obtain unlimited access to our award-winning exclusive news and analysis, we offer subscription packages, including single user, team subscription (2-5 users), or office-wide licences. To help you and your colleagues access our proprietary content, please contact us at [email protected], or +(852) 2122 5222