As American and Chinese energy companies prepare to ink a host of deals during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to the U.S., the financial services industry is reminding President Obama not to forget about their companies.
Engage China, a coalition group that represents the U.S. banks, insurers, and brokers, sent a letter to Mr. Obama urging him to press for greater market access for American firms.
Signatories of the letter include heavyweights such as former Republican Governor Frank Keating, who was appointed as president and CEO of the American Bankers Association in December; Dirk Kempthorne, president and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers, formerly Interior Secretary in the George W. Bush administration; Lee Ann Pusey, president and CEO of the largest trade group of property-casualty insurers in the U.S., the American Insurance Association, and nine others.
The letter reads:
As you meet with President Hu, we respectfully urge you to focus on greater market-opening reforms in China’s financial services sector. Such reform and modernization will help China achieve its economic goals, including building a more services-based, consumer-driven economy, while also benefiting the economies of other nations…
Moreover, fair and competitive access to China’s fast-growing middle class and business sector represents an enormous commercial opportunity for American manufacturers, farmers and ranchers, and service providers, with major implications for U.S. economic growth…
There is a critical link between the need for reform and modernization of China’s financial sector, and the G-20’s call for a more balanced pattern of global economic growth.
The lobby group can look to the fact that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley were recently granted licenses to operate in the Chinese securities industry, where they’re allowed to own 33% of a joint venture with a local partner for encouraging signs. However, its worth remembering that foreign banks have had a tough time making any serious profit when they get into China, as WSJ reporter Dinny McMahon noted last September.