Seng Heng Bank seeks opportunities in Portuguese-speaking world

As a local financial institution keen to develop its business prospects, it is essential to follow international trends, build up one’s own brand name and launch high quality banking products, the general manager of Seng Heng Bank Ltd. (SHB), Alex Li Chin Hung, told The Macau Post Daily in a recent interview.  

Speaking in his office at the Seng Heng Bank Tower of the Macau Landmark, Mr. Li said his bank was keen to promote its financial services and products among representatives of the Portuguese-speaking world during this month’s 11^th Macau International Trade and Investment Fair (MIF) to further strengthen its brand recognition and enhance mutual understanding.

Mr. Li said he believed that Angola was a good place to invest, stressing that after Angola ended its protracted civil war a few years ago, the government in Luanda had turned its focus on reconstruction and economic development. Mr. Li also said there existed great investment potential and business opportunities in Angola’s large-scale infrastructure development projects, adding that the southwest African nation also provided his bank with “good business opportunities.”  

Mr. Li also said that the 11^th MIF, which will take place on September 23-26, was an ideal platform for local banks to seek out new opportunities by striving to set up business ties with companies both from the mainland and the Portuguese-speaking world, adding that while mainland businesspeople were keen to explore opportunities in Portuguese-speaking countries, enterprises in Portuguese-speaking countries were eager to open up trade and investment ties with the mainland.  “We hope to find some new partners from the mainland and the Portuguese-speaking world. This is an advantage that Macau banks possess and that Hong Kong banks simply do not have,” Mr. Li said.

According to Mr. Li, there are three ways for Macau banks to expand their business overseas in general and in the Portuguese-speaking world in particular – open an overseas branch, cooperate with a foreign bank in the target market, or purchase a bank in the target market and turn it into a subsidiary.

Mr. Li also said that competition among banks in Macau was “healthy,” stressing that his bank had build up cooperative ties with other banks, such as Bank of China (BOC), HSBC and the International Commercial Bank of China (ICBC).  Mr. Li explained that land prices in Macau, which on an average stood at about 200 or 300 million patacas in the recent past, had meanwhile reached prices of up to one billion patacas.  “It’s difficult for one bank alone to do this type of business nowadays, so we need to cooperate with other banks,” Mr. Li said.

Mr. Li stressed that after mainland China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the central government had begun to liberalize its banking market step by step. However, he was quick to add that this had resulted in “some problems,” such as huge debts and bad loans. “As long as the finance sector will get more transparent, we hope to establish cooperation with commercial banks in the mainland, Mr. Li said, adding he hoped his bank would be able to enter the stock market in Hong Kong before long.  

Seng Heng Bank (SHB) was established in Macau in 1972.  In November 1989, full ownership of the bank was acquired by Sociedade de Turismo e Diversoes de Macau S.A. (STDM – Macau Tourism and Amusement Company) which held Macau’s casino monopoly for four decades until 2002 and that nowadays functions as casino mogul Stanley Ho Hung Sun’s umbrella company in Macau.

SHB, which is headed by Stanley Ho, has become the second largest locally incorporated bank in Macau, with about 300 employees and assets of 21.4 billion patacas at the end of last year, offering a wide range of banking products and services.

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