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SCMP Reporter

GORDON Wu Ying-sheung, visionary and engineer, yesterday made a convincing demonstration of the old adage that if you owe a bank $1 million, you have a problem. If you owe $1 billion, the bank has a problem.

   Before being interviewed by South China Morning Post reporters and outlining a massive debt reduction programme, Gordon had been enjoying a spot of lunch with John Strickland, executive director of Hongkong Bank.

   The discussions were all about Hopeless Fumblings' ever-mounting debt mountain.

  But HSBC has to pay for the lunch and generally be very, very nice to Gordon because next month Hopeless will be into HSBC to the tune of $9.5 billion.

   If all Gordon's bankers buy him lunch, he is going to be the fattest man in the territory.

    HSBC will be even nicer to Gordon today when he gets to lunch with the man himself, Sir William Purves. We hope no one gives Willie indigestion sneaking up to him like the soothsayer in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and whispering 'Remember Alan Bond' or 'Canary Wharf' in his ear.

  Lest we forget, the bank is very nice to customers right up to the moment they default - then becomes about as much fun to know as the Sun Yee On late payments collection team.

    It is a remarkable coincidence that Gordon should decide on a massive debt reduction programme including the sale of a large slice of the incomplete Bangkok rail project and his incomplete 'super' highway so soon after meeting his main banker.

  It was also interesting to hear Gordon's views on privatisation. Once in the past, he said that if the share price fell to $3 he would make an offer. He almost repeated that remark yesterday - but this time around he said $2.

  Linus factor LINUS Cheung Wing-lam, chief executive of Hongkong Telecom, is set to make the biggest gain from the departure of Lord Young and James Ross from parent company Cable & Wireless.

  Linus was brought in as the big China contacts man - fluent Putonghua speaker, mates up north and so forth.

  But what happened the first time Lord Young rocked into town to meet Linus? He and Mr Ross held a huge press conference and announced a truckload of spectacular deals in China including the fibre optic link from Hong Kong to Beijing and a proposal for a Beijing mobile telephone service.

   Since then Hongkong Telecom has had nothing to say about the progress of the deals - a silent condemnation of Lord Young's 'grandstanding'.

  Given the discount C&W's shares have always traded at and Hongkong Telecom's enormous value as both a cash generator and as an Asian telecommunications hub, the local arm can expect streams of international providers to start calling - AT&T, Sprint, BT, the list of possible bidders or stake buyers is endless - although Citic has first refusal, remember.

  Whatever happens, If Linus does not collect big time, he has only himself to blame.

  Showtime HERBERT Liang, president of the Chinese Manufacturers Association, is obviously building up his portfolio in anticipation of a call from Elite Modelling Agency.

  The October edition of the Business Journal, the association's monthly publication, has belatedly hit our desk and contains no less than 24 shots of him.

  The pose Mr Liang is making his own is the classic 'handing over a souvenir to a Communist Party deputy under-assistant secretary' shot, often imitated by super-model Kate Moss.

  In the bag OUR Zen Koan for today comes from Leslie Frappier who asks 'What is another word for Thesaurus?'   Leslie also had a little grammatical hint for Lai See. He thinks we were wrong to say less trees in a previous article and would have preferred if we had written fewer trees. 'Are you responsible for the 'Use Less Plastic Bags' campaign?' he thrust.

   But Leslie, don't you know that all and everything is one and we merely have the illusion of identity? Which would make less tree the strictly correct way of putting it.



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HSBC

The one about Gordon Wu and the bankers has a really funny lunchline