亞洲地區銀行欲挑戰全球銀行三巨頭

Can you imagine the ignominy? According to a rumour circulating among Hong Kong bankers, the Asian business of ANZ Banking Group had shrunk so much it was being run through the Australian bank’s New Zealand unit.

你能想象這種恥辱嗎？香港銀行界有傳言稱，澳新銀行集團(ANZ Banking Group)的亞洲業務嚴重縮水，以至於現在是由這家澳大利亞銀行的新西蘭分行管理。

For a bank with ambitions to challenge the region’s big three in wholesale banking — HSBC, Citigroup and Standard Chartered — that would have been an embarrassing retreat. In reality it turned out that the New Zealand connection extended only to the nationality of ANZ’s new chief executive, Shayne Elliott, and the location of its tiny regional retail operations, not its wholesale business.

對於一家有雄心挑戰該地區批發銀行業三巨頭——匯豐(HSBC)、花旗集團(Citigroup)和渣打(Standard Chartered)——的銀行來說，這是一次尷尬的撤退。事實上，最後與新西蘭的關係也只是延伸到了澳新銀行新任首席執行官謝恩•埃利奧特(Shayne Elliott)的國籍、及其微不足道的地區零售業務（而非批發業務）的地點上。

Another high-profile pullback from Asia would have burnished the region’s reputation as a deathtrap for ambitious overseas banks. Barclays sounded the retreat this year, slashing its investment banking operations. Before that it was Royal Bank of Scotland, which sold much of its corporate business to ANZ.

再來一次引人注目的撤出亞洲的行動，該地區作爲雄心勃勃海外銀行的危險之地的名聲將進一步加強。巴克萊銀行(Barclays)今年已傳遞出撤退的信號，大幅削減其投資銀行業務。再之前是蘇格蘭皇家銀行(Royal Bank of Scotland)，它把大部分企業業務賣給了澳新銀行。

Other lenders are finessing their operations in Asia: wealth management is in, investment banking less so.

其他銀行正在調整各自在亞洲的業務：加大理財業務，減少投資銀行業務。

The fact that Asia’s patchwork of heterogeneous markets remains difficult to navigate supports the argument that banks are better off being local. Costs are rising and regulation is increasingly national, even political. Indonesia, for example, made access to Singapore for its local banks a condition of the sale of a majority of Bank Danamon to the city state’s DBS.

事實上，多樣性的亞洲市場仍然很難打入，這支持了一種觀點，即銀行最好是本地的。成本不斷增加，監管日益上升到國家、甚至政治層面。例如，印度尼西亞把允許本國銀行進入新加坡市場，作爲將印尼金融銀行(Bank Danamon)多數股權出售給新加坡星展銀行(DBS)的條件。

But still the contenders come. As well as ANZ and DBS, there has been a step-up in activity from China’s giants, led by Bank of China, and Japan’s megabanks, spearheaded by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. It is obvious why they see an opportunity in Asia outside Japan and Australia: it is home to more than half the world’s population, an emerging middle class that is significantly underbanked, and a rising share of the world’s largest companies. Even excluding China these trends hold.

但是，仍然有競爭者進入這個市場。與澳新銀行和星展銀行一樣，以中國銀行(Bank of China)爲首的中國銀行業巨頭、以及以三菱UFJ金融集團(Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group)爲首的日本大型銀行的活動也有所升級。他們之所以看到除日本和澳大利亞以外的亞洲地區的發展機遇，原因很明顯：這裏擁有全球一半以上的人口，新興中產階級明顯未得到充分的金融服務，同時這裏擁有的全球最大企業不斷增加。即使把中國排除在外，這些趨勢同樣成立。

And what is telling about these latest contenders is that they all hail from the region, are mostly playing to existing strengths and are making their moves gradually. This is a far cry from the approach of Barclays, which made a splash in 2010 with a string of big-name investment banking hires, who have since departed.

這些最新加入的競爭者具備很能說明問題的特徵：它們都來自該地區、主要利用自己的現有優勢、逐步採取行動。這與巴克萊的策略有天壤之別。2010年，巴克萊因挖走一連串名聲赫赫的投資銀行家而引起轟動，那些人後來陸續離開了巴克萊。

There are reasons for this softly-softly approach. Corporate banking does not lend itself to the same sort of flashy tactics as investment banking. Poaching a rival’s head of trade finance will not have the same effect as snaffling the head of Morgan Stanley’s investment banking business, which Barclays did.

新加入者這樣步步爲營的做法是有原因的。企業銀行業務並不適合實施像投資銀行那樣招搖的策略。挖走競爭對手的貿易融資主管，與挖走摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的投行業務主管（就如巴克萊所做的），兩者的效果不可同日而語。

Moreover there are domestic considerations. ANZ’s largely homegrown shareholder base has never loved its Asian adventure, not least because of the lower returns than those earned on Australian mortgages. This week the bank reiterated its commitment to its Asian operations partly because selling $3bn of part-stakes in banks across the region had created the impression that it was in full retreat. But the drop in international revenues following those stake sales will also attract less attention at home.

此外，還有一些來自國內的考量。澳新銀行的股東大多來自本土，他們一直都不喜歡澳新銀行在亞洲的冒險，尤其是因爲這些冒險活動的回報低於該行在澳大利亞的抵押貸款中所獲的回報。本週，澳新銀行重申將繼續在亞洲運營的承諾，部分原因是該行出售了分佈在亞洲的一些銀行總值30億美元的部分股權，讓人產生了澳新銀行將全面退出亞洲的印象。但出售這些股權造成的國際收入降低也會使來自本土的注意力減少。

Compared with DBS and ANZ, the strategy of the Chinese and Japanese groups has been simpler: follow home-grown clients around the region with a cheque book. For MUFG and its rivals anything has to be better than Japan’s low growth and negative interest rates. At BofC local units have been increasingly borrowing in dollars and euros, ready to fund outbound investment. BofC is ahead of its mainland rivals in terms of international sophistication, analysts say. MUFG, meanwhile, has demonstrated its commitment by buying into local banks.

與星展銀行和澳新銀行相比，中國和日本的銀行的策略更爲簡單：拿着支票簿緊跟該地區本土客戶的腳步。對三菱UFJ金融集團及其競爭對手而言，任何事情肯定都比日本的低增長和負利率好。中國銀行的當地分支正在借入越來越多的美元和歐元，準備好爲對外投資提供資金。分析師們表示，在國際業務精細化方面，中行已經走在了其中國內地競爭對手的前面。三菱UFJ金融集團則通過買入當地銀行的股份展現決心。

But none of this is likely to unseat the big three global banks in the foreseeable future. In March a survey of corporate banking relationships by Greenwich Associates put HSBC’s market penetration at 60 per cent, StanChart’s at 50 per cent and Citi’s at 44 per cent. ANZ and DBS followed with 34 and 33 per cent respectively. That gap is narrower than it was in 2010, when Deutsche Bank was fourth with 20 per cent, but it is still marked and few industry watchers expect sharp change, given the importance of relationships with regional tycoons.

但以上這些都不太可能在可預見的未來將三大全球性銀行趕下寶座。根據Greenwich Associates在3月對企業銀行業務關係進行的調查，匯豐銀行在該地區的市場滲透率是60%，渣打爲50%，花旗爲44%。澳新銀行和星展銀行分別以34%和33%的市場滲透率緊隨其後。差距比2010年的時候縮小了，當時排在第四位的德意志銀行(Deutsche Bank)的市場滲透率是20%。但差距依然顯著，考慮到這些銀行與地區大亨的關係的重要性，鮮有行業觀察人士預測這種情況將出現劇變。

To many clients the big three, with more than a century of presence, can look more like locals than international behemoths. Alas for their would-be rivals, their businesses are in part an accident of history that cannot be replicated. None of those empires was built in a day. But at least the contenders for their crown appear to have taken that fact to heart.

對三大全球性銀行的許多客戶而言，這些銀行在當地運營了逾一個世紀，比起國際巨頭它們看起來可能更像當地銀行。對那些想要與之匹敵的銀行來說就很遺憾了，某種程度上這三大銀行是一種無法複製的歷史產物。這些帝國的建成都不是一日之功。但至少，試圖奪取它們皇冠的角逐者們似乎都把這個事實銘記於心。