On the afternoon of September 15 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, ICBC drew an unusually crowd as everybody vied to witness the two banks, ICBC and Bank of New York Mellon, to seize this moment at the conference to sign the SWIFT E&I agreement. ICBC, one of the exhibitors in this year's SIBOS led by its Vice President Mr.
Yi Huiman, was greeted with resounding applauses from over 1000 financiers across the world for the past two days. ICBC captivated the global audiences from the industry during its first participation at SIBOS, which strikes an uncharacteristic note of publicity and concern of being the world No. 1 bank in terms of market capitalization, deposits and profitability.
As the dusk fell on September 14 one can see a contrast of "hot" and "cold" at play. While HK was tempest-beaten by the typhoon measured to the scale of No.8, the ICBC cocktail reception was champagne-soaked with peers around the world. The torrent caused a traffic blockage. As a result, it took more than two hours for guests from Royal Bank of Canada and Hang Seng Bank to arrive at the party.
"We brave through the downpour to come because this is an ICBC invitation", as they commented. At the party that evening there were more than 200 guests from over 70 financial institutions across the globe.
September 15, ICBC Vice President Mr. Yi Huiman was invited at Sibos 2009's big issue debates "The Asian century implication for the financial industry". This was the first time that Sibos invited senior key figure from a Chinese commercial bank as a guest of honor to attend the debate. In his topical speech, Mr.
Yi shed his insights on how Asia offers a chance to the abysmal world economy, where will be the innovation of the financial services, how Chinese banks, consumer credit and economy go in tandem in coordinated way, and how ICBC takes the issues of overseas acquisition and internationalization strategy by the reins.
Meanwhile, Mr. Yi shared his views and knowledge with other guests.
Sibos, a global conference organized by SWIFT once a year, brings together all the SWIFT member banks and partners (vendors) to push for the extent of the financial information network and the innovation of financial services, and collaborate to shape the future of the industry. Sibos 2009 is held in Hong Kong for five days from September 14 to 18. Insiders believe that Sibos is a platform for all financial community as a whole to show the grandeur, to talk to each other, to keep in touch with the trend of products and services of global banking industry, and to discuss the hot issues around the financial world.
