The Informer popped in for a quick chat before Mr Fung embarked on his holiday.

Q: What do you think your father would say if he was here?

A: As his son I always wanted to measure my performance against what he expected of me, but I don't think he would be able to make a judgment because his banking era was different from what it is now. Right now it's about mergers and acquisitions [M&As], and about smaller banks finding it difficult to operate in view of things like the Basel Accord II and in terms of investment in technology and in economies of scale. He would just say I am doing the right thing for the present time.

Q: Wing Hang has been through difficult times - including World War II when the bank was closed and re-formed in Hong Kong. How do you compare this banking era to the ones preceding it?

A: You can write a story on the things I hear from my father about when we started and the difficulties. His difficulties were more about size. Wing Hang Bank was small then, and my father could not afford losses and his assets were not diversified enough. Now we are bigger, we have a larger capital base, we can afford some losses and our risk is more diversified.

But my margins are much thinner than what he used to get. It's different. It's not easy to run a bank.

Q: On the transaction you just completed, was it tough?

A: I can't say we were experienced in this because this is our first such transaction, and doing things for the first time is always tough.

I got a lot of help from Frank Wang [deputy chief executive] and Stanley Yuan [chief financial officer]. At the end I asked them whether they thought it was fun and they said 'yes'.

Q: Was there any critical point where things were not going well and you wanted to throw in the towel?

A: I can't tell you the details, but I think the emotional part was like that. On Wednesday, some of us didn't go home until 4am the next day. That was difficult because it felt like the last five yards in a race.

Even before 10pm on Thursday, I wrote an e-mail to my wife and said that there would be a 90 per cent chance I would be on the plane but I am still doing the final part of the negotiations.

I learned a lot from this transaction, but I don't think some of us would want to do it again in the next month.

Q: What is the future of the banking industry in Hong Kong?

A: We believe M&A is the trend, and I can't say we are totally cold to this because we have a number of criteria. It has to be some entity that we are culturally comfortable with. The transaction has to enhance shareholder value through EPS [earnings per share] accretion and ROE [rate of return] improvement and finally the bank must have a clean balance sheet. We don't want to buy trouble. The size will also have to be manageable for us.

Q: People say Wing Hang will merge with Wing Lung Bank, what is your reaction to that?

A: I can only say for ourselves, we know mergers and acquisitions are a necessary step.

Wing Lung has a similar culture to us, but it will be difficult to acquire it, so technically a merger will be easier.

All I can say is that we know them well, we are culturally compatible, and they fit a lot of our investment criteria, but it takes two.

Q: Traditionally, has Wing Hang and Wing Lung had a close relationship?

A: Yes, at the shareholder level we still own some of their shares and they still own some of ours.

You can say we are distant relatives. The two founders are close friends or maybe distant relatives. In the second generation, we know each other well.

Q: Wing Hang Bank is about 20 per cent owned by your family, will that change?

A: It has been like that for the past 60 years, I think we are long-term investors. I think Bank of New York has been with us for 30 years.