StanChart counts on its strength in emerging markets
Liverpool FC sponsorship helps meet goals
Standard Chartered Bank is counting on its strength in rapidly growing emerging markets to sail through the global uncertainties and the euro-zone debt crisis.
“As a bank, we see opportunity as a result of that [global uncertainty]. Looking to 2012, we certainly and strategically continue and expect to grow in the markets which we’ve been in,” chairman John Peace said yesterday.
The London-based bank concentrates on major markets in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, which contribute more than 90 per cent of its revenue and profit.
Gavin Laws, group head of corporate affairs, said: “We have worked very hard to try to differentiate our company. We have a lot of capital and liquidity. Those bring us to make revenue.”
StanChart started a four-year strategic partnership with the Liverpool Football Club
at the beginning of the 2010-11 season in an effort to build up the bank’s brand, which, in return, could attract more customers to the bank.
Liverpool’s fan club is huge in the core markets in which the bank operates and is growing. There are about 5 million Liverpool fans in Thailand.
About 52 per cent of people in China aged between 16 and 69 like soccer, and 55 per
cent of the same age group in Malaysia like to watch it on television. In Thailand, 70 per cent of the same age group are very interested in the sport.
The bank has raised its brand awareness in its key markets and deepened its relationships with customers by offering such Liverpool FC assets as Liverpool debit cards.
Based on the Sport Marketing Survey in 2011, awareness of StanChart, as a result of the Liverpool sponsorship, increased from 9 per cent in pre-season to 35 per cent in May.
More than 60 per cent of the respondents felt more positive towards the bank as a result of the sponsorship, particularly in China, Indonesia and Thailand. That could bring more emerging-market customers to use the bank’s products and services.
Although StanChart’s major activities centre on the emerging markets, the bank maintains its base in London.
“We have no plan to move our domicile from London,” Peace said.
StanChart employs about 85,000 people in 71 markets across the world, with 2,000 of them based in London.
“At this time, for us to move the domicile to another country, for that to happen, we would have to be certain of the real benefit for our shareholders,” he said.
Peace also expressed optimism over the would-be progress of the European leaders’ efforts to resolve the euro-zone debt crisis.
“I think it [the European debt crisis] will affect markets and certainly it will affect
China. It [won’t be] a hard landing in China, but certainly, it’s slowing in those markets,”
he said.
