Hi everyone. I'm Nikola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Southern Wealth Fund. And today I'm joined by Bill Winters, the group CEO of Standard Charter Bank, one of the world's most distinctive banks. Headquartered in London, you have most of your activities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. And we own more than 2% of the company worth a billion dollars.

We are really proud shareholders.

So, Bill, the bank opened its first offices far away in Mumbai, Kolkata and Shanghai in 1853.

Long time ago, and you've been CEO for 10 years, which is only 5% of the duration of the bank.

So tell us, what is it that makes standard charges so special?

Yeah, first is great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

So you're right.

It actually started as a Standard Bank of Africa, which started in Port Elizabeth, in South Africa,

today's South Africa, and the Charter Bank of India, China, and Australia, which first branch in Calcutta.

And obviously at the outset, it was, there were two banks.

It only came together in 1969, still a long time ago, but to finance the empire.

It was to finance trade within the empire.

And those are still our roots.

People sometimes refer to us as an emerging markets bank.

That's not quite right because we have big operations in the US and Europe.

I'm not sure that places like Hong Kong and Singapore are emerging markets anymore in any case.

Or they refer to us as a trade bank, which is true.

We are a trade bank and the second largest trade bank in Asia, of course, which is the biggest

trading center of the world.

But really, we're a connector bank.

We just connect markets to markets and people to people because we have multiple home markets.

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