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Jardine Fleming is greatly disadvantaged in not being able to offer its customers the full range of banking services and this affects its standing both in the region and internationally. In fact it is prevented from developing certain overseas activities because it does not have the required status in its home base in Hong Kong. Both its parents Robert Fleming and Jardine Matheson have full banking licences in London.
It is plainly absurd that despite the
? Administration's full support confirmed to me on this trip by
I
Sir Piers Jacobs Exco continues to defer our application. am sure if you are personally convinced by our case Exco will follow your lead.
It has become apparent that Exco is being lobbied by the Hong Kong Bank. We cannot understand how the confidential information of our application has come to their notice. They should be relaxed about our competition since while Jardine Fleming competes actively with their merchant bank, Wardley, we have no intention of going into the retail branch banking business on any major scale, a situation anyway which the Hong Kong Government might wish to encourage on grounds of
competition. On this trip I have pointed all this out to the Chairman of the Hong Kong Bank and I have reminded him of the supreme irony of the situation when he had to ask the British Prime Minister to intervene personally on behalf of a subsidiary of the Hong Kong Bank, James Capel, to obtain a licence for a seat on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on the grounds of reciprocity. The Prime Minister was most effective in her support with the Japanese authorities. I have also suggested
that if the Hong Kong Bank wishes to impress the Bank of England of the merits of closer cooperation or even merger with the Midland Bank, then the Bank may not be impressed by restrictive practices in the Bank's home base in Hong Kong.
Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, lunched with us recently at Lombard Street to discuss overall commercial prospects in Hong Kong. We went over Jardine Fleming's bank licence problems and he offered to help. We explained that while our application was only deferred, not rejected, we did not feel the time was yet right to take him up on this offer.
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