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OK foreign bankers, is it time to panic? Probably not, although youmight want to be careful dealing with individual clients and keepgood records. Bloomberg has the basics here : Standard Chartered Plc (STAN), the U.K. bank whose earnings fromChina doubled last year, said its private-bank relationship managerWu Yidian Eden has been detained by police in the Asian nation. We are unable to comment on the reason for her detention —this is a matter for the police, Singapore-based spokeswomanMelissa Cheah said in an e-mailed response to queries today. Wecan confirm that Standard Chartered is not being investigated. Police from the city of Wuxi notified Shanghai-based Wu s familyof her detention on March 6, the Wall Street Journal reportedtoday. Chinese authorities are investigating a client of Wu, anaturalized Singapore citizen, who allegedly fled with as much as$50 million from Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., according to thereport. I'm sure that some bankers will be outraged or scared by thisreport, but I don't really see anything surprising here. Ms.Wu's job was to help rich Standard Chartered customers managetheir money. One of her clients fled the country with a gazilliondollars, and the government is investigating the embezzlement. Look, the government is not questioning the embezzler'stailor, or barber, or dentist. They are talking to the one serviceprovider that was in the best position to assist in moving thatmoney around, including across borders. Am I missing somethinghere? Of course they would want to talk to her, perhaps severaltimes. Now, saying all that, obviously if she is detained without charge,treated improperly, etc., then that's another thing entirely.But either way, she's certainly a person of interest in thismatter, yeah? Foreign banks better get used to this sort of thing. You might notbe aware of this, but there's a lot of money floating aroundChina these days: Standard Chartered, HSBC Holdings Plc and Hong Kong-based Bank ofEast Asia Ltd. (23) are among foreign lenders expanding in China totap its growing wealth. Chinese millionaires will hold $8.76trillion of assets by 2015 as their number is set to more thandouble, according to a study by Julius Baer Group and CLSA AsiaPacific Markets in September. What does this incident mean to the bankers out there, includingall these foreign banks that have opened up retail operations inthe past couple of years specifically targeting China's nouveau riche ? It means that you better be careful what sort of advice you givethese clients, and you better keep an eye on employees like Ms. Wu— and I'm not suggesting she did anything wrong. Theseguys should have some special training and be subject to a bit morescrutiny than other employees. Here's an idea for the foreign banks: transfer some of yourgrizzled veterans that have done time in Russia (not in jail; Imeant at the bank) to branches here in China to train staff thatwill be providing services to your nouveau riche clients. Rest assured that these Russia vets know the score andcan provide valuable assistance. At the same time, you might want to keep your eyes on those guystoo, though. Just in case. I am an expert from eas-security-tag.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Eas Pin , China Eas Deactivator, Eas Antenna,and more.
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