Sun Yu: Sticking to common sense

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“I’m from the lucky generation, born in the 1970s when China was about to open up,” says Sun Yu, executive vice-president of the Bank of China, in Beijing. “What China has experienced over the past 40 years in terms of opening up to the world is something of a miracle.

“That has extended to financial services. Now China has four of the biggest 10 banks in the world.”

Sun started working in banking 20 years ago, first working in the treasury department.

“In those days, we acted as the borrowing window for China,” he says. “But soon our foreign exchange reserves began to grow, in the country as well as in the bank, and so the role of treasury began to shift from the borrowing side to the investment side.”