Finance

Major international investment banks expect China’s economy to grow at a slower pace in 2024 than in 2023, according to annual forecasts released in the last few months.
The average prediction among five firms, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, pointed to a 4.6% increase in real GDP this year, down from 5.2% expected for 2023.
The world’s second-largest economy has slowed from the double-digit growth of past decades, weighed down during the pandemic restrictions and, more recently, a slump in the real estate market.

MEISHAN, CHINA – JANUARY 15: A textile worker works at the workshop of Sichuan Renshou Jin’e Textile Co., Ltd. on January 15, 2024 in Meishan, Sichuan Province of China. (Photo by Pan Jianyong/VCG via Getty Images)
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING — Major international investment banks expect China’s economy to grow at a slower pace in 2024 than in 2023, according to annual forecasts released in the last few months.
The average prediction among five firms, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, pointed to a 4.6% increase in real GDP this year, down from 5.2% expected for 2023.

China was due Wednesday to release GDP figures for 2023, and previously announced an official target of around 5% growth for the year. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Premier Li Qiang said the Chinese economy grew by around 5.2% last year.
Beijing is set to reveal this year’s target at an annual parliamentary meeting in early March.

China GDP forecasts

Firm
2024
2023

Goldman Sachs
4.8
5.3

UBS
4.4
5.2

Citi
4.6
5.3

JPMorgan
4.9
5.2

Morgan Stanley
4.2
5.1

Average
4.6
5.2

Among the five bank forecasts CNBC looked at, JPMorgan had the highest at 4.9%, while Morgan Stanley had the lowest at 4.2%.
“An important task in 2024 is to manage the downside risk in the economy, particularly from the housing market correction and its spillover risks,” JPMorgan’s Chief China Economist and Head of Greater China Economic Research Haibin Zhu and a team said in a report earlier this month.
“Deflation pressure will likely fade in 2024, with the turnaround in global commodity prices and domestic pork prices, but low inflation will stay along with insufficient domestic demand,“ the analysts said, noting that new tech and other sectors have grown rapidly, but not enough to offset housing and other drags on growth.

The world’s second-largest economy has slowed from the double-digit growth of past decades, weighed down during the pandemic by Covid-19 restrictions and, more recently, a slump in the real estate market.
Despite significant growth in sectors such as tourism and electric cars, China’s economy last year did not rebound from the pandemic as quickly as many banks had initially expected.
“The Chinese economy did not follow the script in 2023,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in their 2024 outlook in November.
They highlighted that in October, Beijing made the rare decision to increase the official fiscal deficit.
“Overall, we expect macro policy to ease notably [in 2024], particularly by the central government, in order to support the economy and to prevent real GDP growth from decelerating too much from 2023 to 2024.”

The International Monetary Fund in November also cited China’s policy announcements as a reason for its decision to raise the 2023 growth forecast to 5.4%, from 5% previously.
However, the IMF said it still expected China’s growth to slow in 2024 to 4.6% “amid continuing weakness in the property market and subdued external demand.”

It remains unclear to what extent China is willing to stimulate its economy.
Premier Li said Tuesday in Davos that the country “did not resort to massive stimulus. We did not seek short-term growth while accumulating long-term risks.”
In the long term, analysts generally expect China’s economy to slow further from a high base.
UBS expects annual GDP growth to slow to around 3.5% in the years following 2025 due partly to the housing slump, which they also expect to restrict how much China can deploy stimulus.

Read more about China from CNBC Pro

According to UBS analysts, there’s still growth potential China, specifically in further movement of workers from rural to urban areas, as well as investment in manufacturing, services and renewable energy.
Even at 3% to 4%, the pace of China’s growth remains faster than that of developed economies.
The IMF in October forecast U.S. real GDP would slow to 1.5% growth in 2024, down from 2.1% in 2023. The fund is set to release an update to its global predictions on Jan. 30. More

WHEN JAMES GORMAN took the helm of Morgan Stanley it was barely afloat. His tenure as the bank’s chief executive began on January 1st 2010, in the teeth of the global financial crisis. After the failure of Lehman Brothers, in 2008, fear had spread that other dominoes would soon topple. Morgan Stanley seemed a likely candidate. Hank Paulson, then treasury secretary, is rumoured to have offered it up to JPMorgan Chase for free (Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s boss, apparently declined). The firm then took a government bailout. In 2009 its return on equity, a benchmark measure of profitability, was just 4%.Fourteen years later Mr Gorman has handed the wheel of a far finer vessel to Ted Pick, the former head of its investment-banking and trading arms. “We had our moment before the abyss,” said Mr Pick on January 16th, during his first earnings call in charge. “We are determined never to face anything like those days again.”Mr Pick described Morgan Stanley’s progress after 2009 as a “classic ‘self-help’ story”. It started out as a highly leveraged, volatile outfit specialising in trading and investment banking. In the years since it has transformed itself into Wall Street’s pre-eminent wealth manager, through a series of well-chosen deals.Mr Gorman has often described this strategy as building a “ballast” to balance the “engine room” of the traditional investment-banking business. He started by scooping up Smith Barney, a wealth-management business, from Citigroup for a song during the financial crisis. In 2019 a small stock-plan administration company followed. Then in 2020 Mr Gormon pulled off two mammoth deals in just three months, buying E*TRADE, a brokerage firm, and Eaton Vance, an asset manager.The result is that Morgan Stanley is sitting on $6.6trn in client assets, the biggest pot of wealth in the world. It now earns almost two-thirds of its profits from that pot, and has posted a juicy return on equity, averaging 16% a year since 2020. Other global banks are now aping its push into wealth management. Analysts making the bull case for UBS’s recent acquisition of Credit Suisse, a firm with a large wealth business that ran into trouble in 2023, point to Morgan Stanley as an example of how such a merger can pay off.Could the firm become a victim of its own success? On the earnings call on January 16th one analyst asked Mr Pick if he anticipated fiercer competition in wealth management, as other banks attempt to beef up their operations. Margins in Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management business in 2023 were around 25%, a drop from the 30% or so the firm has posted in prior years. The share price fell by some 4.5% in the hours following the earnings call.Mr Pick himself seems set to stay the course. Those who have worked with him describe a disciplined, straight-talking, no nonsense kind of man—a steady pair of hands who can keep things sailing smoothly. “There may have been a change in leadership,” he told investors, “but there has not been a change in strategy.”He did not rule out that Morgan Stanley might grow through acquisitions, either. “We have made five different acquisitions. The view inside the house is: that’s good for now.” But if opportunities come up, especially outside America where the firm has lower market share, “we could staple them on,” he said.In a sign of how far Morgan Stanley has shifted from its past identity, Mr Pick added that he thinks the “ballast” and “engine room” analogy Mr Gorman favoured might need updating. “At one point we called the wealth and investment management business ‘the ballast’, which was the right word because we wanted to convey stability,” he said. But now he thinks “it is actually the engine for future Morgan Stanley growth.” ■ More

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said artificial general intelligence, or AGI, could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future.”
AGI is a term used to refer to a form of artificial intelligence that can complete tasks to the same level, or a step above, humans.
Altman said AI isn’t yet replacing jobs at the scale that many economists fear, and that it’s already becoming an “incredible tool for productivity.”

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the Hope Global Forums annual meeting in Atlanta on Dec. 11, 2023.
Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says concerns that artificial intelligence will one day become so powerful that it will dramatically reshape and disrupt the world are overblown.
“It will change the world much less than we all think and it will change jobs much less than we all think,” Altman said at a conversation organized by Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Altman was specifically referencing artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a term used to refer to a form of AI that can complete tasks to the same level, or a step above, humans.
He said AGI could be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future.”
Altman, whose company burst into the mainstream after the public launch of the ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, has tried to temper concerns from AI skeptics about the degree to which the technology will take over society.
Before the introduction of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model in March, Altman warned technologists not to get overexcited by its potential, saying that people would likely be “disappointed” with it.
“People are begging to be disappointed and they will be,” Altman said during a January interview with StrictlyVC. “We don’t have an actual [artificial general intelligence] and that’s sort of what’s expected of us.”

Founded in 2015, OpenAI’s stated mission is to achieve AGI. The company, which is backed by Microsoft and has a private market valuation approaching $100 billion, says it wants to design the technology safely.
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the Iowa Republican caucus on Monday, Altman was asked whether AI might exacerbate economic inequalities and lead to dislocation of the working class as the presidential elections pick up steam.
“Yes, for sure, I think that’s something to think about,” Altman said. But he later said, “This is much more of a tool than I expected.”
Altman said AI isn’t yet replacing jobs at the scale that many economists fear, and added that the technology is already getting to a place where it’s becoming an “incredible tool for productivity.”
Concerns about AI safety and OpenAI’s role in protecting it were at the center of Altman’s brief ouster from the company in November after the board said it had lost confidence in its leader. Altman was swiftly reinstated as CEO after a broad backlash from OpenAI employees and investors. Upon his return, Microsoft gained a nonvoting board observer seat at OpenAI.
WATCH: OpenAI, Microsoft and NYT will likely reach a settlement

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

A host of companies including Ecosia, Qwant and Shibsted have signed an open letter accusing Big Tech “gatekeepers” of not doing enough to engage effectively with them and others.
The firms have called on the European Commission and the European Parliament to do everything in their power to ensure the gatekeepers comply with the letter and spirit of the Digital Markets Act.
It comes ahead of a key March 7 deadline, by which Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and ByteDance are required to be compliant with the new rules.

The logos of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft displayed on a mobile phone with an EU flag shown in the background.
Justin Tallis | AFP via Getty Images

A raft of major technology and media companies have signed an open letter accusing tech giants of failing to bring their businesses into full compliance with incoming European Union digital competition rules.
The signatories say that companies defined by the EU as “gatekeepers,” including Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and TikTok owner ByteDance, haven’t done enough to engage effectively with them and others in their industry.

Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, companies with more than 45 million monthly active users and a market capitalization over 75 billion euros ($81.2 billion) are considered gatekeepers.
They are required to, for example, make their messaging apps work with those of rivals, and let users decide which apps come pre-installed with their devices.
Another EU requirement is that these platforms do not implement practices that lead to the “self-preferencing” of their services over others.
The open letter, which was signed by international media group Schibsted, eco-friendly search engine Ecosia, privacy-focused search engine Qwant, secure messaging app Element, and VPN service ProtonVPN, said the gatekeepers “have either failed to engage in a dialogue with third parties or have presented solutions falling short of compliance with the DMA.”
They also said that businesses and consumers have been largely “kept in the dark” about what’s going to happen after March 7, 2024 — a pivotal deadline by which all six Big Tech gatekeepers need to get their businesses into compliance with the DMA.

“The signatories of this letter represent thousands of businesses affected by the DMA,” the letter stated. “They urge the gatekeepers to engage as soon as possible with business users and other stakeholders, such as business and consumer associations, in a constructive dialogue and make swift progress on their proposed compliance solutions.”
“They also urge the European Commission and the European Parliament to use all within their power to ensure that the gatekeepers comply with both the letter and spirit of the DMA, starting from 7 March 2024,” the signatories added.
Here are the 24 companies that signed the letter:

Adevinta
Allegro
Billiger.de
Ceneo
CompareGroup
Ecosia
Element
Favi
Heureka Group
Idealo
Kelkoo
Ladenzeile
Le Guide.com
OLX
Open-Xchange
Panther Holding GmbH
Preis.de
Prisjakt
Proton
Qwant
Runnea
Schibsted
Solute
Vipps

The EU Commission and the EU Parliament were not immediately available for comment on the issue when contacted by CNBC. CNBC also reached out to Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and ByteDance.

Christian Kroll, CEO and co-founder of Ecosia, told CNBC ahead of the open letter that regulators needed to keep large technology companies in check, or else risk businesses like his facing financial consequences.
“There has always been a huge challenge: Google has had the monopoly for over a decade, but I think we are currently more optimistic than that. It is yet to be determined what will happen on March 7 but we know that 2024 must be the year of fair choice in online search for Europe,” Klein told CNBC.
“EU policy makers have the choice to deliver a digital market that delivers fair competition and choice for European consumers and business,” Kroll added.
Of particular issue for Ecosia and other competing search engines was a proposal from Google for a “choice screen” that would display different search engines on the same window.
“Without a choice screen that is designed fairly, in the letter and spirit of the DMA, we will not see a positive shift in market share but rather further entrenchment of the dominance of gatekeepers such as Google – which would be a failure of the DMA,” Kroll added.
“Ahead of the March 2024 deadline, we need support from the EC and all hands on deck to ensure proactive engagement. The focus of digital regulators around the world will be on Europe as global interest in choice screens increases.”
Last week, the EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager met with the CEOs of Apple, Alphabet, and Qualcomm to discuss regulation and competition policy compliance, according to a post by Vestager on X.
She said she had discussed Apple’s obligation to allow distribution of its apps outside the company’s proprietary AppStore, as well as ongoing competition cases including one involving the firm’s Apple Music music streaming platform.
With Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Vestager said she discussed the design of choice screens, self-preferencing requirements under the DMA, and an EU antitrust case looking at the company’s role in the advertising technology market.
She didn’t specify what was discussed with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. More

Here’s what the company reported: Earnings of $5.48 per share; it wasn’t immediately clear if that was comparable to the $3.51 estimate of analysts surveyed by LSEG.
Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $10.80 billion expected, according to LSEG

David Solomon, Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs, participates in a panel discussion during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on April 29, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.
Michael Kovac | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Goldman Sachs on Tuesday posted fourth-quarter results that topped analysts’ expectations on better-than-expected asset and wealth management revenue.
Here’s what the company reported versus what Wall Street analysts surveyed by LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv, expected:

Earnings: $5.48 per share; it wasn’t immediately clear if that was comparable to the $3.51 estimate of analysts surveyed by LSEG.
Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $10.80 billion expected, according to LSEG

Goldman said earnings for the quarter jumped 51% to $2.01 billion, or $5.48 per share, from a year ago, when the bank was weighed down by loan-loss provisions and surging expenses. Companywide revenues rose 7% to $11.32 billion from a year ago on growth from the bank’s asset and wealth management and platform solutions divisions.
Asset and wealth management revenue jumped 23% from a year earlier to $4.39 billion, topping the StreetAccount estimate by nearly $550 million, on higher revenue from equity and debt investments and rising management fees. Helped by rising markets in the fourth quarter, Goldman said it booked gains on public equities and markups in debt investments.
Other Goldman operations met or slightly missed expectations. For instance, while platform solutions revenue jumped 12% to $577 million, that was below the $612 million estimate.
In the company’s trading division, stronger-than-expected results in equities mostly offset a miss in fixed income revenue.
Equities trading jumped 26% to $2.61 billion in revenue, thanks to derivatives activity and equities financing, topping the $2.22 billion StreetAccount estimate. Fixed income posted $2.03 billion in revenue, a 24% decline from a year earlier on weakness in interest rate and currencies trading, and well below the $2.53 billion estimate.

Goldman CEO David Solomon has endured a tough year, thanks to dormant capital markets and strategic missteps.
But hope is building that Goldman can turn a corner after pivoting away from Solomon’s failed consumer banking efforts.
Goldman’s core activities of investment banking and trading may not recover in the fourth quarter, but analysts will want to hear about the possibility of a rebound in 2024. Early signs are that corporations that have waited on the sidelines to acquire competitors or raise funds may finally be ready to act this year.
Unlike more diversified rivals, Goldman gets most of its revenue from Wall Street. That can lead to outsized returns during boom times and underperformance when markets don’t cooperate.
On Friday, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo each posted results that were marred by a litany of one-time items.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates. More

The Morgan Stanley headquarters is seen in New York City on Jan. 17, 2023.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Morgan Stanley on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter revenue that surpassed expectations, boosted by the strength in investment banking.
Here’s how the bank did compared with Wall Street expectations:

Earnings per share: 85 cents, may not compare with $1.01 expected, according to LSEG
Revenue: $12.90 billion vs. $12.75 billion, expected, according to LSEG

Shares of Morgan Stanley climbed more than 1% in premarket trading following the results.
Morgan Stanley said its revenue from investment banking rose 5% from a year ago on the back of a 25% increase in fixed income underwriting revenue amid higher investment grade issuances.
Net income came to $1.52 billion, or 85 cents per share, down more than 30% from $2.24 billion, or $1.26 per share, a year ago.
The bank’s results were hit by two one-time regulatory charges, however. There was a $286 million charge related to a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation special assessment and a $249 million legal charge to settle a criminal investigation and a related Securities and Exchange Commission probe of the unauthorized disclosure of block trades.
This is the first earnings report under new CEO Ted Pick, who succeeded James Gorman as CEO at the start of 2024. Pick is a Morgan Stanley veteran who rose through the ranks to lead the bank’s Wall Street operations.

“In 2023, the Firm reported a solid ROTCE [return on average tangible common shareholders’ equity] against a mixed market backdrop and a number of headwinds,” Pick said in a statement. “We begin 2024 with a clear and consistent business strategy and a unified leadership team. We are focused on achieving our long-term financial goals and continuing to deliver for shareholders.”
Wealth management delivered fourth-quarter net revenue of $6.65 billion, slightly higher than the $6.63 billion from the same quarter a year ago. Revenue from investment management was $1.46 billion for the quarter, little changed from last year.
Shares of the New York-based bank have fallen nearly 4% in 2024 after a 10% gain last year. More

Chinese Premier Li Qiang said that tech innovations should not be used as a way to restrict or contain other countries.
“To keep the competition healthy and bring out the greatest vitality, the only way is to enhance cooperation in innovation,” Li said via an official English translation of his Mandarin-language remarks made on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Li did not specifically name any countries in his remarks. Beijing has repeatedly asked Washington to remove restrictions on Chinese companies that prevent them from buying advanced technology from U.S. firms.
U.S. measures in the last two years have explicitly focused on cutting China off from high-end semiconductors used for artificial intelligence, out of concern that the tech is fueling the military capabilities of Beijing.

Li Qiang, China’s premier, delivers a special address on the opening day of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Chinese Premier Li Qiang said that tech innovations should not be used as a way to restrict or contain other countries.
“To keep the competition healthy and bring out the greatest vitality, the only way is to enhance cooperation in innovation,” Li said via an official English translation of his Mandarin-language remarks made on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Scientific and technological fruits should benefit humanity as a whole, instead of becoming a means to restrict or contain the development of other countries,” Li added, calling for “more open measures.”
Li did not specifically name any countries in his remarks. Beijing has repeatedly asked Washington to remove restrictions on Chinese companies that prevent them from buying advanced technology from U.S. firms.
U.S. measures in the last two years have explicitly focused on cutting China off from high-end semiconductors used for artificial intelligence, out of concern that the tech is fueling the military capabilities of Beijing.

Following his speech, Li spoke about the risks and opportunities of generative AI, such as ChatGPT, in a brief question-and-answer session with World Economic Forum Founder Klaus Schwab.
“To put plainly, we human beings must control the machines instead of having the machines control us,” Li said, calling for a universal “red line in AI development” without specifying details.

He added that AI shouldn’t just benefit a small group of people, and that the interests of developing countries should be prioritized.
U.S.-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT surged in popularity just over a year ago, but isn’t officially available in China. Many similar chatbots from Chinese companies, such as Baidu and Alibaba, launched to the public in mainland China, after getting the green light from authorities in August.
”In AI, we are doing a lot of work to roll out policies and regulations,” Li said. “We introduced many laws and regulations to ensure the data security, AI-related ethics and generative AI services. All these are efforts to explore an AI governance framework suited to China’s national conditions.”

Global cooperation

Li on Tuesday cast China as a supporter of multilateralism and called for further global cooperation.
In his speech to global business leaders, Li emphasized that China would take steps to address concerns about the flow of data across international borders and the ability to participate equally in government procurement.
Foreign businesses operating in China have found it difficult to comply with the country’s tightened restrictions on data collection and export, also complaining that domestic businesses have unfair advantages when competing for local government bids.
“China remains firmly committed to opening up,” Li said. “We will continue to create favorable conditions for the world to share in China’s opportunities.”
Li met with Swiss President Viola Amherd ahead of the Davos conference and is set to visit Ireland later in the week.
China on Monday announced it will give Swiss citizens visa-free entry, while the Swiss side will “provide more visa facilitation” for Chinese citizens and businesses investing in Switzerland. It is not clear when the measures will take effect.

China’s economic growth

Li separately said in his speech of Tuesday that the Chinese economy grew by around 5.2% in 2023. His comments come a day ahead of the National Bureau of Statistics’ scheduled release of official GDP figures and other data, set for Wednesday in Beijing.
“In promoting economic development, we did not resort to massive stimulus. We did not seek short-term growth while accumulating long-term risks,” Li said. “Rather, we focused on strengthening the internal drivers.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping is skipping Davos this year. His U.S. counterpart Joe Biden has likewise not attended event since he became president.
Xi earlier on Tuesday called for increasing the connections between domestic and overseas financial markets, while ensuring financial security, according to state media outlet Xinhua.
The Chinese leader was giving a speech about the “high-quality development of China’s financial sector” at a school for Chinese Communist Party officials, also known as the National Academy of Governance.
— CNBC’s Jenni Reid contributed to this report. More

Trump won the Iowa caucus by around 30 points over his closest rival and is the clear favorite to secure the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
During his last term in office, Trump took a combative stance toward Beijing and triggered a trade war with a slew of tariffs on Chinese goods and constant threats of further punitive measures.

Bill Winters, chief executive officer of Standard Chartered, said the U.S. Federal Reserve looks set to pause its interest rate cycle in June get a better read on the latest inflation data.
Bloomberg | Getty Images

Former U.S. President Donald Trump would be a “transactional president” if he returns to power, but is unlikely to blow up the Biden administration’s rebuilding of relations with China, according to Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters.
Trump won the Iowa caucus by around 30 points over his closest rival and is the clear favorite to secure the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, despite facing 91 felony counts across numerous criminal cases relating to his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, mishandling of classified documents and hush-money payments to a porn star.

During his last term in office, Trump took a combative stance toward Beijing and triggered a trade war with a slew of tariffs on Chinese goods and constant threats of more economically punitive measures.
President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to repair the fragile relationship. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo visited China last summer, and Biden met Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco in November.

Speaking to CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Winters said Washington and Beijing are now “pretty interlinked” and that for any president to “aggressively disentangle” would be bad for the U.S., Chinese and global economies.
“Nobody really wants that or needs that right now, so I think the slight re-engagement that we’re seeing through the Biden administration, visits from the Commerce Secretary and Janet Yellen etc., are an indication to me that the U.S. is looking to stabilize,” he said.
“If Trump becomes president, we know that he’s a transactional president, and there’s probably a transaction in there someplace that keeps the economy on an even keel without fundamentally disrupting that relationship, but of course we watch all the time and we’re well aware that there could be either unintended consequences or accidents, but I’m staying pretty optimistic that we could avoid the worst.”
Though it’s headquartered in the U.K., Standard Chartered earns most of its revenue in Asia, and Winters also said he remains “very optimistic about the Chinese economy in the medium-, long-term” despite its well-documented short-term headwinds. More