Can you imagine the ignominy? According to a rumour circulating among Hong Kong bankers, the Asian business of ANZ Banking Group had shrunk so much it was being run through the Australian bank’s New Zealand unit.

你能想象这种耻辱吗？香港银行界有传言称，澳新银行集团(ANZ Banking Group)的亚洲业务严重缩水，以至于现在是由这家澳大利亚银行的新西兰分行管理。

For a bank with ambitions to challenge the region’s big three in wholesale banking — HSBC, Citigroup and Standard Chartered — that would have been an embarrassing retreat. In reality it turned out that the New Zealand connection extended only to the nationality of ANZ’s new chief executive, Shayne Elliott, and the location of its tiny regional retail operations, not its wholesale business.

对于一家有雄心挑战该地区批发银行业三巨头——汇丰(HSBC)、花旗集团(Citigroup)和渣打(Standard Chartered)——的银行来说，这是一次尴尬的撤退。事实上，最后与新西兰的关系也只是延伸到了澳新银行新任首席执行官谢恩•埃利奥特(Shayne Elliott)的国籍、及其微不足道的地区零售业务（而非批发业务）的地点上。

Another high-profile pullback from Asia would have burnished the region’s reputation as a deathtrap for ambitious overseas banks. Barclays sounded the retreat this year, slashing its investment banking operations. Before that it was Royal Bank of Scotland, which sold much of its corporate business to ANZ.

再来一次引人注目的撤出亚洲的行动，该地区作为雄心勃勃海外银行的危险之地的名声将进一步加强。巴克莱银行(Barclays)今年已传递出撤退的信号，大幅削减其投资银行业务。再之前是苏格兰皇家银行(Royal Bank of Scotland)，它把大部分企业业务卖给了澳新银行。

Other lenders are finessing their operations in Asia: wealth management is in, investment banking less so.

其他银行正在调整各自在亚洲的业务：加大理财业务，减少投资银行业务。

The fact that Asia’s patchwork of heterogeneous markets remains difficult to navigate supports the argument that banks are better off being local. Costs are rising and regulation is increasingly national, even political. Indonesia, for example, made access to Singapore for its local banks a condition of the sale of a majority of Bank Danamon to the city state’s DBS.

事实上，多样性的亚洲市场仍然很难打入，这支持了一种观点，即银行最好是本地的。成本不断增加，监管日益上升到国家、甚至政治层面。例如，印度尼西亚把允许本国银行进入新加坡市场，作为将印尼金融银行(Bank Danamon)多数股权出售给新加坡星展银行(DBS)的条件。

But still the contenders come. As well as ANZ and DBS, there has been a step-up in activity from China’s giants, led by Bank of China, and Japan’s megabanks, spearheaded by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. It is obvious why they see an opportunity in Asia outside Japan and Australia: it is home to more than half the world’s population, an emerging middle class that is significantly underbanked, and a rising share of the world’s largest companies. Even excluding China these trends hold.

但是，仍然有竞争者进入这个市场。与澳新银行和星展银行一样，以中国银行(Bank of China)为首的中国银行业巨头、以及以三菱UFJ金融集团(Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group)为首的日本大型银行的活动也有所升级。他们之所以看到除日本和澳大利亚以外的亚洲地区的发展机遇，原因很明显：这里拥有全球一半以上的人口，新兴中产阶级明显未得到充分的金融服务，同时这里拥有的全球最大企业不断增加。即使把中国排除在外，这些趋势同样成立。

And what is telling about these latest contenders is that they all hail from the region, are mostly playing to existing strengths and are making their moves gradually. This is a far cry from the approach of Barclays, which made a splash in 2010 with a string of big-name investment banking hires, who have since departed.

这些最新加入的竞争者具备很能说明问题的特征：它们都来自该地区、主要利用自己的现有优势、逐步采取行动。这与巴克莱的策略有天壤之别。2010年，巴克莱因挖走一连串名声赫赫的投资银行家而引起轰动，那些人后来陆续离开了巴克莱。

There are reasons for this softly-softly approach. Corporate banking does not lend itself to the same sort of flashy tactics as investment banking. Poaching a rival’s head of trade finance will not have the same effect as snaffling the head of Morgan Stanley’s investment banking business, which Barclays did.

新加入者这样步步为营的做法是有原因的。企业银行业务并不适合实施像投资银行那样招摇的策略。挖走竞争对手的贸易融资主管，与挖走摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)的投行业务主管（就如巴克莱所做的），两者的效果不可同日而语。

Moreover there are domestic considerations. ANZ’s largely homegrown shareholder base has never loved its Asian adventure, not least because of the lower returns than those earned on Australian mortgages. This week the bank reiterated its commitment to its Asian operations partly because selling $3bn of part-stakes in banks across the region had created the impression that it was in full retreat. But the drop in international revenues following those stake sales will also attract less attention at home.

此外，还有一些来自国内的考量。澳新银行的股东大多来自本土，他们一直都不喜欢澳新银行在亚洲的冒险，尤其是因为这些冒险活动的回报低于该行在澳大利亚的抵押贷款中所获的回报。本周，澳新银行重申将继续在亚洲运营的承诺，部分原因是该行出售了分布在亚洲的一些银行总值30亿美元的部分股权，让人产生了澳新银行将全面退出亚洲的印象。但出售这些股权造成的国际收入降低也会使来自本土的注意力减少。

Compared with DBS and ANZ, the strategy of the Chinese and Japanese groups has been simpler: follow home-grown clients around the region with a cheque book. For MUFG and its rivals anything has to be better than Japan’s low growth and negative interest rates. At BofC local units have been increasingly borrowing in dollars and euros, ready to fund outbound investment. BofC is ahead of its mainland rivals in terms of international sophistication, analysts say. MUFG, meanwhile, has demonstrated its commitment by buying into local banks.

与星展银行和澳新银行相比，中国和日本的银行的策略更为简单：拿着支票簿紧跟该地区本土客户的脚步。对三菱UFJ金融集团及其竞争对手而言，任何事情肯定都比日本的低增长和负利率好。中国银行的当地分支正在借入越来越多的美元和欧元，准备好为对外投资提供资金。分析师们表示，在国际业务精细化方面，中行已经走在了其中国内地竞争对手的前面。三菱UFJ金融集团则通过买入当地银行的股份展现决心。

But none of this is likely to unseat the big three global banks in the foreseeable future. In March a survey of corporate banking relationships by Greenwich Associates put HSBC’s market penetration at 60 per cent, StanChart’s at 50 per cent and Citi’s at 44 per cent. ANZ and DBS followed with 34 and 33 per cent respectively. That gap is narrower than it was in 2010, when Deutsche Bank was fourth with 20 per cent, but it is still marked and few industry watchers expect sharp change, given the importance of relationships with regional tycoons.

但以上这些都不太可能在可预见的未来将三大全球性银行赶下宝座。根据Greenwich Associates在3月对企业银行业务关系进行的调查，汇丰银行在该地区的市场渗透率是60%，渣打为50%，花旗为44%。澳新银行和星展银行分别以34%和33%的市场渗透率紧随其后。差距比2010年的时候缩小了，当时排在第四位的德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)的市场渗透率是20%。但差距依然显著，考虑到这些银行与地区大亨的关系的重要性，鲜有行业观察人士预测这种情况将出现剧变。

To many clients the big three, with more than a century of presence, can look more like locals than international behemoths. Alas for their would-be rivals, their businesses are in part an accident of history that cannot be replicated. None of those empires was built in a day. But at least the contenders for their crown appear to have taken that fact to heart.

对三大全球性银行的许多客户而言，这些银行在当地运营了逾一个世纪，比起国际巨头它们看起来可能更像当地银行。对那些想要与之匹敌的银行来说就很遗憾了，某种程度上这三大银行是一种无法复制的历史产物。这些帝国的建成都不是一日之功。但至少，试图夺取它们皇冠的角逐者们似乎都把这个事实铭记于心。