Top banker talks up hometown advantage

Chan Tze-ching is among a new wave of Hong Kong-bred executives to take key positions once occupied by expatriates

NOT MANY BANKERS in Hong Kong have a public following. But Chan Tze-ching, Citigroup's newly appointed Hong Kong and Taiwan country officer, is remembered by much of the local investing public for his former stint as a moonlighting radio talk show host.

Prior to his 2003 transfer, which saw him head up Citigroup's Taiwan operations, Mr Chan was a part-time co-host of Metro Finance's popular radio show, Best of the Best. Each week, he and Alice Kwok spent an hour chatting on air with fixtures of the local business community, including Hopewell Holdings chairman Sir Gordon Wu Ying-sheung and Airport Authority chairman David Pang Ding-jung.

'It was a lot of fun to chat and share views with other senior business executives,' Mr Chan fondly recalls while in his harbourview office in Citibank Tower. 'It was rather different from most business meetings.'

That the world's largest financial services group, now chaired by former United States treasury secretary Robert Rubin, should choose someone who is as comfortable in a Cantonese-language radio studio as he is in a Tokyo boardroom says a lot about the winds of change sweeping through Hong Kong's banking industry.

After years of playing second-fiddle to expatriate bosses parachuted into top banking jobs, a new crop of Hong Kong-bred executives has finally stood up.

Mr Chan, for example, joined Citigroup's Hong Kong operations in 1980 as a management associate. In 1986, he was transferred to Japan but returned eight years later as Hong Kong country treasurer and head of sales and trading.