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Howard Winn

When city's image is at  stake, get Asia's finest
We noticed there was a sizeable police presence at the recent Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair at the AsiaWorld-Expo convention and exhibition centre. At least 60 or so officers were deployed in uniform or plain clothes. 
The event, run by UBM Asia, lasted several days and the police presence came entirely free. 
 Asked why the exhibition should  receive the services of 'Asia's finest' at such competitive rates, the police conceded that security of the venue was primarily the responsibility of the security management of the venue provider and  the organiser. 
However, prior to the enhanced police presence, the exhibition had suffered some headline-making thefts. 
The police said: 'The prevalence of theft and other crimes would adversely affect the image of Hong Kong as an international city and business centre.' 
The jewellery exhibition is not the only event in town that poses reputational risk should things go wrong. The Rugby Sevens tournament, for example, is a high-profile event that also has a strong police presence, but the organisers at least pay for part of the force's services. The policy seems a bit random.
A low blow
The recent boardroom events at HSBC Holdings  are looking increasingly murky. It now transpires that chief executive Michael Geoghegan had told the board that since he wouldn't be getting the chairmanship he would prefer to resign even though he had the option of working under Douglas Flint.  
This version of events is rather different from those presented in the Financial Times saying that he had become angry and threatened to resign if passed over for chairman. 
So who was the high-level person who appears to have leaked misleadingly to the newspaper, and why? Aides to Geoghegan are saying it was done to portray him in a poor light and to justify pushing out a long-serving capable CEO. On the face of it he appears to have been badly served by the bank for which he worked for 37 years.
Renaissance party
We hear that Moscow-based Renaissance Capital now has a licence to operate in Hong Kong. It will be marking the occasion in November with an investor conference with presentations and one-on-one meetings with about 40 companies from Russia, Central Asia and Africa. So that will be different. If the potential of financial institutions can be measured by their ability to put on a good party, then on the basis of its party in Moscow a few months ago, Renaissance will go far.
PR gone wrong
Mongolian Mining Corp's US$600-700 million IPO got off to an unsteady start, at least as far as the press is concerned. 
Summoned to a briefing, journalists were surprised to learn that it would be conducted via video link with the management in London. So, all the photographers came away with were fuzzy images of a video screen. 
Also, although the prospectus was printed over the weekend, it was not made available until much later in the day. Reporters were treated to a slideshow with numbers briefly flashed up on the screen too quickly for anyone to make sense of them let alone write them down. Even the best of us find it hard to write about an IPO without at least some useful numbers. 
The PR company masterminding this shambles was Strategic Public Relations Group. Yesterday's strategy was certainly attention-grabbing but possibly not of the kind that Mongolian Mining was hoping for.
A fine let-off
The chairman of Hong Kong-listed Rusal, Viktor Vekselberg (pictured),  could afford a big sigh of relief last week after being acquitted by the Swiss federal criminal court of breaching securities regulations. 
Acquittal means that he escapes having to pay what would have been a record fine of 40 million Swiss francs (HK$315.5 million). The court said it found no evidence that Vekselberg and two Austrian businessmen had built an illegal shareholder group in pursuit of a controlling interest in Swiss industrial conglomerate OC Oerlikon Corp. 
The case has strained relations between Russia and Switzerland with Swiss food and beverage giant Nestle denied permission to import baby food products in Russia. Also airline Swiss, a unit of Deutsche Lufthansa, had difficulties obtaining permission to fly over Russia on its route to China. The decision gives Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission more breathing space to figure just how big a person has to be for them to ignore the fit and proper person's criteria with respect to the chairmen of Hong Kong-listed firms.



Lai See