East Asia

Hang Seng Bank’s chief executive, Louisa Cheang, has just come through her second year of running Hong Kong’s quintessential grassroots bank, and things seem to be going swimmingly for the former head of retail banking at HSBC. Small and medium-sized enterprises are Hang Seng’s core business, particularly the aspiring stallholders, traders and shopkeepers that line Hong Kong’s teeming streets. As they – and Hong Kong – have grown bigger and richer, Hang Seng has helped them along that prosperous journey to China and beyond – and this last year was no exception.

In Hong Kong’s buoyant, brand-conscious private-banking sector, inevitably it’s a tussle between the Swiss: Credit Suisse and UBS. UBS has the bigger operation, with nearly double the headcount of relationship managers, according to industry data – or 1,138 at UBS versus 586 at Credit Suisse – in the Asia-Pacific region.

Such was HSBC’s supremacy across Hong Kong’s investment banking sector that some of its competitors for our awards left the bank off their self-promoting submission tables, arguing (unconvincingly) that HSBC was a local bank and thus doesn’t qualify in Hong Kong’s international capital markets.

In Hong Kong, HSBC is the bank others are measured by and, in many cases, aspire to be, notably the big Chinese state banks in their forever-quest to usurp it. Yet again, ‘The bank’, as it’s known, led the Hong Kong market in all the key measures: overall customer accounts, mandatory provident fund accounts and mortgages, in a market where property is paramount.

Corporate and social responsibility hasn’t gained much traction in industrialized, ultra-capitalist Taiwan, but E.Sun is one bank that takes it seriously. Chief executive Joseph Huang says it is part of E.Sun’s ethos.

In an era when legacy banks are challenged to win Asia’s so-called K-Pop market (and in media-flooded Taiwan, that’s a bigger challenge than in many other markets), Standard Chartered thinks it may have got it right. Its smart in-app keyboard aims to extend and enhance its digital offering, providing tailored social media channels for the island’s affluent millennials.

With their close links to the US, Taiwanese have long regarded Citi as their go-to international bank, a status that the likes of HSBC and Standard Chartered are normally accustomed to in much of Asia.

With their close links to the US, Taiwanese have long regarded Citi as their go-to international bank, a status that the likes of HSBC and Standard Chartered are normally accustomed to in much of Asia.

E.Sun likes to cite the Taiwan government’s annual gongs honouring this heavily industrialized island’s ‘outstanding small and medium enterprises’ as validation of its SME business. The awards are assessed by the economics ministry and, since 2014, a third of the winners have been E.Sun clients.