Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank

"Where the most money was, Stokes decided, was Hong Kong. There was a bank there with more money than some small countries. Its name was distinctly Chinese, but in 1972 the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was ‘the most Establishment bank you could possibly be’, Stokes would recall. As he remembers it, the sort of Englishmen who ran the bank acted as if they were defending an outpost of a vanished empire."

"STOKES WAS NEARLY sixty and rich beyond most people’s dreams when he started doing business in China, a vastly different proposition from his early forays with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. He didn’t need to do it and could have chosen to chase health and the sort of happiness most people associate with rest and recreation. He was hovering over Seven and WesTrac and his pastoral and property interests, managing the managers he’d hand-picked to run each outpost of his empire."