Action stations (TT DecJan09 p38-39)

The eighth, and latest, in the ACT’s talkingtreasury series, sponsored by RBS, was held in Hong Kong on 21 October as the repercussions of the growing world financial crisis made themselves felt locally.

Shares in CITIC Pacific, the Hong Kong subsidiary of China’s stateowned investment group, were in freefall on the day of the conference itself. The company had just revealed that a series of unauthorised foreign exchange bets made by its senior executives on the direction of the Australian dollar and the euro threatened to misfire spectacularly and lose $2bn. Management had mistakenly assumed the US dollar would continue to depreciate against its Australian counterpart, after a weak performance in recent years.