My name is Todd Wilcox. I’m the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of HSBC China. I came to China two years ago to join the HSBC team here. And now my current responsibility is helping our business grow in China.

I’m Canadian. It’s an exciting place to be China right now. The connection to Canada has been important. That’s why I came here.

I’ve lived in a number of different cities all over the world, finding Shanghai as large as it is. This is a very large city. It’s actually very easy to live in as an expat. The transportation systems are excellent. It’s very clean. The people are friendly. And it’s really an interesting, exciting and dynamic city.

Shanghai is our home. We started here over 150 years ago. For us, I guess this is the beachhead of our opportunities in China and also our opportunities around the world.

The interesting thing about China right now is the internal consumption is expanding dramatically. So we’re seeing many companies from many countries wanting to come to China to take advantage of the growing consumer trends within China.

At the same time, Shanghai is really the center of our China outbound efforts. If you look at our structure globally, we’re operating in 67 countries. We have 25 very specific China desks. Its individuals typically come from China to help China outbound.

Chinese companies now wanting to go global, and that certainly accelerated in the last several years and even in the last two.

Shanghai already is in many ways a world financial center. Much has happened in last twenty years, certainly from my first visit twenty years ago to now, this is a much different city - larger, more dynamic and the center for business.

HSBC is the largest foreign bank in China. We’re really at a well position to take advantage of the growth that is happening here.

The government has moved aggressively in that direction. They’ve just announced 100 different policy changes, one third of those are directed towards liberalization of the financial service’s sector. I think the city is moving in the right direction. And I think we will continue to do so for the future.

An example of that is, the proposal is to have the London Shanghai stock connect. When it arrives, we will be well placed to take advantage of that.

The CIIE, China International Import Expo, is really a flagship event. It really caters well to us because it focused on other countries’ industries coming to China to look for opportunity.

The organization in HSBC to be prepared for the CIIE is quite extensive. What we have is a local team working on it. We meet weekly and really engages all our business lines. All of us are coming together to see how best we can do to meet clients and grow the business. Because it’s such a global event in Shanghai.

It’s really a global event so we’ve now connected to colleagues in London, in Hong Kong, in New York and so on to try to see how we can all coordinate to really leverage this event.

If you go to the expo, I encourage everyone who can to go to the expo, which you will see a very impressive HSBC presence. Because we want to make sure people see us as the trade bank, the bank for China -- outbound business and inbound business.

Certainly, our organizing team and myself, we think the CIIE is going to be a very exciting event, be very dynamic.

We look forward to seeing our clients there, seeing new clients there, and seeing many of the other interesting displayers. So welcoming everybody there.