the rules of the environmental game can change very quickly. the authorities in china are getting serious about cutting emissions and pollution, as the requirement by the beijing municipal government on the shougang steel group to cut back its output has shown. the problem in china is that regulations are not always strictly enforced. but this can change overnight, resulting in major compliance problems for the companies concerned and increased risk for the banks that have lent to them. hong kong banks which lend into china would therefore be well advised to keep this in mind. finally, banks should pay close regard to their own “ corporate ecology ”. banks can contribute to environmental protection by the way in which they manage their use of resources in their own operations. in this way banks can be responsible corporate citizens while at the same time reducing business costs. the type of measures that can be adopted include saving on energy consumption, recycling of paper, waste management, purchasing environmentally friendly products and use of video conferencing to cut down on unnecessary travel. use of office automation such as email can also help to reduce the consumption of paper, provided of course that staff can be encouraged not to print out the messages. the important aspect of this, as with other areas of environmental management, is to try to set measurable objectives for green initiatives, to assign management responsibility for monitoring performance and to offer staff guidance and training on how to achieve the desired results. as noted earlier, the progress should be communicated to the outside world in the bank ’ s environmental report. i would like to close by expressing my appreciation for being allowed the opportunity to speak to you today on this important topic. doing the research for my speech has certainly helped to raise my own awareness of the importance of environmental issues in general and the implications of these for financial institutions in particular. i hope that you will find this conference to be useful and informative, and that you will pick up lessons and advice on environmental issues that you can take back with you to build into your business operations and decisions. the need to do this is the keynote of my speech and the main theme of this conference.

joseph yam : international financial system – challenging issues welcome address by mr joseph yam, chief executive of the hong kong monetary authority, at the sibos 2009, hong kong, 14 september 2009. * * * sibos was last held here in hong kong in 1991. so it has taken you 18 years to come back to hong kong. i wonder what took you so long. a lot has happened here in this free and open international financial centre in the past 18 years that ought to have interested you enough to bring you back here earlier. i can think of, for example, the establishment of the hong kong monetary authority in 1993! seriously, financial globalisation and innovation have made life here, where there is a high degree of market freedom and ample liquidity, rather challenging, perhaps a little too challenging for the financial authorities. and on a couple of occasions we had to take controversial, remedial action to safeguard monetary and financial stability. on top of this, there were of course the market excitement, or interestingly the lack of it, surrounding the reversion of sovereignty ; the inevitable bursting of the housing bubble that did not, i repeat not, lead to a collapse of the financial system ; the construction of our multi - currency and multi - dimensional financial infrastructure that made rtgs dvp and pvp possible for anybody wanting to manage risks more properly here in this time zone ; and the emergence, more recently, of the rmb offshore market here that is also serving as a laboratory for testing financial liberalisation on the mainland, a development that is of increasing importance to global finance. but it is still a great pleasure, after all these years, to welcome sibos back to hong kong. i understand that the objectives of sibos this year are “ learning lessons from the past, exploring the post - crisis landscape and paving the way for future innovation ”. these are indeed important objectives, having regard to the current state of global finance. indeed, for the past couple of years they have been occupying much of the time of the financial authorities and the industry. the g20, the financial stability board and its standing committees, and the standard setting bodies are all working hard and there is no lack of specific subjects to address – the basel capital framework, the accounting standards for valuation and for off - balance sheet activities, capital requirements for trading activities, compensation practices, central counterparties, principles for the oversight of hedge funds, supervisory colleges, cross - border cooperation on crisis management,