I have been an infrastructure banker for more than 25 years, since taking my first job at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan) in Hong Kong in 1990. I had just graduated from the University of Oxford and returned immediately to my beloved home to commence my career. In those days, Hong Kong was the undisputed financial centre of Asia and at least 70 per cent of all infrastructure lending was conducted out of the banks’ Hong Kong offices, with small satellite offices established in Singapore to cover the growing infrastructure needs of Southeast Asia.

Today, this situation has completely reversed, with the large majority of commercial banks that focus on project finance being domiciled in Singapore. Over the last few decades, China has primarily financed its infrastructure requirements through its government coffers, its large public sector banks and international equity markets (Hong Kong’s investment banks played a dominant role to support the latter but this business is also shrinking). President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) road and belt initiative, which will link China with Europe, will require much broader and innovative sources of financing.