1133P
CONFIDENTIAL
1. Su pa 2.1
·
BANK OF ENGLAND Threadneedle Street London
EC2R 8AH
Tal sent E Rut Ith
lith
crail Er Reuter,
24 April 1986
Tuti utitur.
2
Cro 25/4
x
Anthony Layden Esq
Hong Kong Department
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AP
Dear Layden
HONG KONG:
STANDARD CHARTERED
1 As I mentioned to you I have sought the views of those in the Bank involved with Hong Kong and with Standard Chartered.
2 The first point to make of course is that it is not yet clear that the Lloyds' acquisition of Standard Chartered will take place. However, for the sake of a response to Hong Kong's request for our preliminary reactions, we will assume that it does. That said, it is difficult to know at this point exactly what is in Lloyds' mind as regards the overseas operations of Standard Chartered. The press release that they issued indicated that they would be pragmatic, retaining the Standard Chartered name and personnel where it made commercial sense. It would obviously make no commercial sense to antagonise the Hong Kong authorities or to upset local opinion by proposing significant change to their Hong Kong presence or activities. The conclusion should be therefore that Lloyds would adopt a fully co-operative attitude towards the Hong Kong authorities. They would, however, clearly want to control the Hong Kong operations in practice; indeed, we would want them to. But if the Standard Chartered name were retained, we would foresee no great problems for Hong Kong, which ought to be able to accept the change without too much fuss. There would perhaps even be less problem example in terms of amending the note-issue ordinance Chartered became Standard Chartered or when Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation absorbed Mercantile Bank.
-
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for
than when
3 As to the possibility of an alternative, foreign bidder, again we are on hypothetical ground and it is more difficult to give a reaction. It would depend who the bidder was and to what extent
HKR102/1
RY
6 MAY 1986
RY
AB 95.
(38)