Banking on the future
July 8, 2006 | 12:00am
Banks have always been key players in modern development. They have driven local businesses and national economies forward and basically made the world go around. In Asia, HSBC is an acknowledged leader in banking and known too for its progressive CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Headquartered in London, the bank traces its origins to Hong Kong in the mid-19th century boom of trading between China and the West. I recently visited their offices in the Fragrant Harbor to attend the finals of the Young Entrepreneurs Competition and also to get the chance to visit their landmark bank building there.
We arrived in Hong Kong in the evening (I traveled with HSBC officers and the winning Philippine teams to the competition) and stayed at the Marco Polo on the Kowloon side. Looking out across the water to the main island skyline, we could immediately see the HSBC bank building with its distinctive facade and prime location in the city’s central business district. Before telling you about the competition, let’s dwell first on that prime example of modern architecture, which coincidentally is celebrating its 20th year without losing its cutting-edge look and function.
Banks are also the key clients who commission the world’s best architects to design what become important urban and even global landmarks of architecture. This is the case with HSBC, which in the late ’70s searched for an architect to design "the most beautiful bank in the world." They chose a charismatic and young (44 years old at the time) British designer, Norman Foster. It would be his first in a long line of skyscrapers and innovative structures that include the ITN Building in London, the iconic Reichstag in Berlin, and (to bring him full circle) the Chek Lap Kok airport in Hong Kong. For his achievements he has been recognized by his home country – becoming Lord Norman Foster – and rules today with imperious authority over the rest of the architectural world.
Foster’s design for HSBC was truly innovative. He designed it to be extremely flexible, energy efficient and aesthetically appealing. The building was conceived as a "kit of parts," as Foster redefined the nature of building skyscrapers. With world-renowned engineers Ove Arup, he fleshed out a 47-story, 180-meter machine for banking that honestly portrayed its structure and function – a reflection of HSBC’s core value of transparency in banking.
I had seen the building in several past trips to Hong Kong, but this was the first time for me to tour the structure from top to bottom. The first impression is that of lightness. Aluminum and steel is everywhere and the building feels like a giant airplane ready for takeoff. The building, in fact, was prefabricated and assembled on site – much like a giant airplane or ship. All elements were designed to be fitted in various permutations to produce large, open spaces for offices, banking halls, cafeterias, conference rooms and even toilets (which reminded me of airplane toilets, only bigger).
Foster organized the interior spaces around a 10-story atrium, which is accessed from below – an entry that brings visitors literally up through the ground floor that serves as an entry plaza. Guarding this plaza is a pair of bronze lions (touching them before doing business with the bank supposedly brings good fortune). Escalators bring pedestrians into the atrium, which is flooded with natural light that is brought in by a giant sun scoop at the ceiling of the cathedral-like space.
Foster owes his success to this marvelous first skyscraper. HSBC has continued to seek and support such young and innovative talent. This brings us to 2006 and HSBC’s presence in the Philippines. The bank has been in this country for 130 years and has been the champion of enterprise, entrepreneurship and the environment all this time. The bank’s involvement extends from the business field to the academe through its popular HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards.
This year the Ateneo de Manila University’s John Gokongwei School of Management (JGSOM) has scored a hat trick with its third win. The winning team is a trio called Kulay Kultura and they bested teams from Far Eastern University. The FEU teams won the silver (for their Eco Tiles Corporation) and bronze awards (for the Coal Nine Corporation).
The winning business plan of the Blue Eagle trio was Kulay Kultura/Piyestang Pinoy, an online full-service travel agency offering a different type of tourism product – fiesta vacation tours for foreigners, balikbayans and domestic tourists. The planned business aims to be the first and only tour operator offering interactive and culturally rich tour experiences at our many fiesta holiday destinations. These are bundled with side trips and excursions to surrounding places of historic and cultural interest. Participants are encouraged to wear native outfits, ati-atihan garb for total immersion, cooking, setting up buntings, joining parades and processions or dancing in the streets and not just watching from the sidelines.
JGSOM graduating students Jaime Alejandro Mendejar, Angeli Agatha Co, and Marc Richmond Cu make up the Kulay Kultura team. They and the two FEU teams were awarded cash prizes and the trip to Hong Kong. The FEU teams provided moral support to the winner team as they represented the country in the Regional Grand Finals. The competition took a day with interesting presentations by the Thais, the Malaysians and the local Hong Kong teams. It was close but unfortunately the Philippine team did not place. It did, however, win a six-month scholarship to AIM’s Venture into Entrepreneurship Program and a one-week study tour at the University of California-Berkeley in San Francisco, USA.
The HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards will surely get more competing entries next year. Pinoy business students are getting better and better at creating business plans that work and are engagingly different. The contest is part of HSBC’s continuing commitment to the Philippines through the education and development of the youth so they can become "creative thinkers, intelligent risk-takers and innovative entrepreneurs," as HSBC’s Philippine CEO Warner Manning recently explained.
Innovation and creativity are hallmarks too of young Filipino architects and designers. How I wish there were an institution here like HSBC who would risk taking Filipino architects and related professionals seriously enough to commission them to build more towers of enterprise (many of the skyscrapers built in the last 10 years in Makati were designed by foreign firms). Hopefully in the future, these very same HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awardees will become the CEOs of local business houses and remember that the Filipino equivalent of a Lord Norman Foster is just waiting to be discovered.
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