Sir William Purves, chairman of HSBC Holdings, says the banking group has no significant exposure to the currency turmoil which has swept Southeast Asian countries. 'We have been very conservative in recent years,' he said yesterday. 'We foresaw some of these problems arising in Thailand and our exposure to finance companies for instance was very limited. 'As we saw things developing, we reduced that exposure. Our exposure was not abnormal,' he said. He was speaking after HSBC held its first board meeting in Beijing, part of its policy of holding one board meeting a year outside London. He described Beijing as a natural choice for the meeting both because the directors were in Hong Kong for the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings, and also because so much had happened in China in 1997, including Hong Kong's return, the growth of the Chinese economy and the 15th Communist Party Congress. Sir William said the financial problems were serious in Thailand but less so in other countries. 'We have some remaining exposure and we do not know if companies which borrowed in foreign currency will be able to survive the significant devaluation of the baht,' he said. 'We are in the risk business. We do not take proprietary or speculative positions for our own account so we neither have significant gains nor significant losses . . . We make markets in these currencies and do not speculate against a currency in a country where we operate. 'Each year we have to make provisions. It remains to be seen what provision we will make in the current year. I do not think that it will be material or significant for our group.' He said the currency turmoil would not hurt the group's expansion in personal and mortgage banking in Southeast Asia. 'It is probably the safest and most attractive of our businesses and we are fortunate to be in the countries involved. 'In some, we have been able to open new branches and what has just happened will not slow us down,' he said. Some governments might be reconsidering how they opened up their financial systems but this would not affect the plans of his group. He described the turmoil as growing pains because of the huge inflows of capital that could not be satisfactorily absorbed and because central banks and monetary authorities had insufficient experience to deal with them. 'Corrections of speculative and excessively high stock markets are good and necessary in the medium term, if painful immediately,' he said. He said Hong Kong and Singapore were far less affected by the turmoil. 'In the SAR some of these difficulties arose years ago and as a result we have very strong and stable financial institutions in Hong Kong, with very good supervision by the HK Monetary Authority, and the Singapore Monetary Authority is also a very capable regulator,' he said. Later yesterday Sir William and the board met Vice-Premier Zhu Rongji and visited a new Hongkong Bank branch on the ground floor of a new office building belonging to China Ceroils on Changan Avenue RIGHT MOVES Beijing is 'natural choice' for meeting Impact of regional currency turmoil seen as only minimal Mortgage banking sector set to grow