As charm offensives go, HongkongBank's latest effort may have produced mixed results. The territory's largest financial institution decided to invite its biggest rival, the Bank of China, round to its exoskeleton on Queen's Road for what was dubbed the inaugural Bank of China night.
The evening was calculated to be a wise piece of diplomacy with the Bank of China likely to emerge as the key bank in the newly repatriated Hong Kong. The evening produced some interbank games. A shock result by any standards was HongkongBank's victory at ping-pong, a sport which mainland Chinese have traditionally dominated on the world stage.
A drinking competition ensued in which another defeat occurred, but not without incident. The Bank of China cried foul saying its performance was constrained by the use of Carlsberg beer, which its staff have little experience of drinking. A re-match was organized minutes later with Chinese beer, Tsingtao. But again - perhaps because of their superior weekend training - the staff of the territory's oldest bank prevailed.
As the games came to a close, HongkongBank chairman John Strickland made an off-the-cuff speech that fondly recalled "the good old days" when he first arrived in Hong Kong in the late 1960s. At that time, he noted, the Bank of China was one and the same institution as the propaganda mouthpiece Xinhua and the People's Bank of China.
The speech was greeted with bemusement on one side and horror among fellow HongkongBankers. The so-called "good old days" in question - the two years Strickland initially spent in Hong Kong before going to the US - coincided with the Cultural Revolution and the worst riots the former colony ever experienced.
It was not viewed as a very tactful reference given the bank's strenuous efforts to distance itself from its colonial past in the new Hong Kong. Steven Irvine