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EuroWire – July 2010
23
province of Alberta, cost the government at Ottawa
$300 million, with $1.1 million spent on armoured vehicles
alone.Assuming identical costs in Huntsville, a picturesque
town in the District of Muskoka, hosting the leaders of
France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Japan, the United States,
and the United Kingdom for the day and night of 25
th
June
2010, works out to about $12.5 million per hour. Originally,
the G20 summit also was set to take place in tiny Huntsville
(population 18,000), but the larger June 26
th
to 27
th
meeting
– attended by finance ministers and central bank governors
– was moved to Toronto’s Metro Convention Centre.
Finance
An ill wind for Goldman Sachs
blows balmy in Asia
Asian banks are likely to benefit from the fraud charges
brought against Goldman Sachs Group Inc in the United States.
Reporting from Singapore for Business Week, Jonathan Burgos
observed that bank shares in China and India – which have
outperformed global rivals by about 30 percentage points since
the New York-based brokerage house Lehman Brothers filed for
bankruptcy in September 2008 – seem well positioned to extend
their advantage. The US Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) sued Goldman, a huge global investment banking and
securities firm, on 16
th
April. (“Goldman Probes Enhance Allure
of Asian Banks,” 21
st
April). “Asian emerging-market financial
stocks will continue to outperform,” Mr Burgos was told by
Khiem Do, the Hong Kong-based head of multi-asset strategy at
Baring Asset Management (Asia) Ltd, which oversees $11 billion.
“There’s a lot less volcanic eruption in Asian financials compared
with Western financials, which face increasing regulation and
sovereign-debt issues.”
“Asian banks in general have more healthy balance sheets, and
their loan growth so far has been recovering quite well versus
still-negative loan growth in US and European banks,” said Grace
Tam, vice president of investment services at JPMorgan Asset
Management Ltd, also in Hong Kong. Ms Tam’s unit manages
about $102 billion in Asia-Pacific assets. Ironically, much of the
strength of the Asian banks derives from the financial crisis
triggered in 1997 by plunging currencies that forced Indonesia,
Thailand and South Korea to seek International Monetary Fund
aid. The crisis also reinforced the importance of fiscal prudence
in banking. As a result, Asia’s emerging-market countries have
about $3.7 trillion in reserves, almost half the global total.
Dorothy Fabian – USA Editor