Amerasia envy
纽约第一银行惹人羡慕

New York is home to at least one successful bank. It is in Queens
纽约至少有一家成功的银行，就在皇后区。

Sep 22nd 2012 | NEW YORK | from the print edition

SUBWAY line 7 begins near Morgan Stanley’s headquarters on Broadway, pauses in Grand Central Station near JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters on Park Avenue, and then, a long snooze later, ends in Flushing, in the New York borough of Queens. Here, there are no suits, no yellow cabs, and more chatter in Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese and Hindi than English. There is also a remarkably successful bank, a small 24-year-old institution named Amerasia.

地铁7号线从百老汇的摩根士丹利总部附近开出，经停柏克大道摩根大通公司总部附近的中央车站，然后你再打个长盹，就到达纽约皇后区法拉盛的终点站了。在这里，没有人西装笔挺，没有黄色出租车，用韩语、普通话、广东话、印度语聊天的人比用英语的还多。在这里，还有一家非常成功的银行，那就是仅成立24年的一家小机构——纽约第一银行。



Amerasia’s return on its $290m in assets approached 2% in the first half of 2012, a number that would be excellent even if times were good. SNL Financial, a research firm, rates it the best among America’s 4,300 small banks. Amerasia shames large ones as well. JPMorgan Chase, often said to be the country’s best-run financial institution, struggles to make a 1% return on its $1.8 trillion asset base; Morgan Stanley’s return is less than half as much as that. Over the past three years Amerasia, which is privately held, has notched up annual growth of close to 11% in assets, and seen compounded earnings growth of 50%. James Huang, the bank’s boss, believes the disarray in finance will enable his bank to keep expanding fast for another year or two.

2012年上半年，纽约第一银行2亿9千万资产的收益率接近2%，即使在经济好的时候，这个数字也不得了。调查公司SNL金融将纽约第一银行评为美国最4300家小型银行中最成功的一家。纽约第一银行也让那些大型银行脸上无光。人称全美经营状况最佳的金融机构摩根大通公司，其18亿基础资产的收益率也很难达到1%；摩根士丹利的收益还不及那一半。而在过去3年，未上市的纽约第一银行的资产年增长率接近11%，复合收益增长率为50%。纽约第一银行老板詹姆斯•黄认为，金融业的混乱会让他的银行在未来一到两年保持快速扩张。

Operating in a tough environment is nothing new for Mr Huang. He founded the bank along with fellow Taiwanese immigrants in 1988 after three years scraping together the $5.5m in minimum capital then required. To survive, Mr Huang maintained his day job with the Manhattan office of a Taipei-based plastics importer. On his long commute between the two jobs, he saved money by reading newspapers extracted from the subway dustbins. New York was in one of its periodic slumps, after the stockmarket crash in 1987; in its first months of operations, the bank had a small loss (there has been none since).

对黄先生而言，在艰难时期经营已不是什么新鲜事。在用三年拼凑到当时开办银行所需的最低资本550万美元后，1988年他和几位台湾移民朋友成立了纽约第一银行。为了生计，白天黄先生在一家总部在台北的塑料进口公司的曼哈顿分部工作。奔波于两份工作，在冗长的通勤时间里，他为了省钱，就看从地铁垃圾筒里捡来的报纸。1987年股市崩盘后，纽约处于一次周期性衰退中；开业第一个月，纽约第一银行小有亏损（仅此一次）。

Growth has come in tightly controlled steps. When expansion meant buying the small building next door to the original branch, the valuable ground-floor retail space was leased to Starbucks. A second branch opened in 2007 after years of discussion, and a third is being pondered. Yes, a new office would expand the bank’s reach, but geographic spread has an impact on efficiency and control. Mr Huang still grimaces at the thought of a bad loan the bank made in 1994 to a factory located two hours away.

纽约第一银行实现增长是步步为营的。当扩张意味着买下原分行旁边的一小栋楼时，首层值钱的商铺区租给了星巴克。第二家分行经多年讨论后于2007年开张，目前正在斟酌成立第三家。没错，设立新分行会扩大银行的影响范围，但地域扩张会影响效率和管理。一家距银行2小时路程的工厂在1994年的贷款成了坏帐，黄先生如今一想到此事仍然愁眉苦脸。

In Taiwan, says Mr Huang, the goal of every banker is to know his clients so well he can be a matchmaker for their children. That is not possible in America, he adds—there is too much divorce, so too much risk of a relationship souring—but the principle stands. His customers are businesses nearby, primarily restaurants and small stores. Many are Chinese; a smaller group is Korean; many of the rest are Indian. The favoured loan is a commercial mortgage structured to be paid back over 15 years but granted in five to seven-year increments. All loans are held to maturity.

在台湾，黄先生说，每位银行家的目标都是充分了解自己的客户，要达到可以为其子女介绍对象的程度。这在美国是不可能的，他又说——因为美国太多人离婚了，一段婚姻关系恶化的风险太高——不过这条原则依然有效。他的客户都是附近的商户，主要是餐馆和小商店。很多是中国人，一部分是韩国人，剩下的很多是印度人。客户们比较喜欢的是计划15年偿还、但每次只发5到7年的额度。所有贷款都是持有至到期的。

Mr Huang considers this to be an infinitely better way to invest than buying shares or bonds (both of which he avoids) that cannot be subjected to the same sort of intimate credit appraisal. Because Amerasia’s numbers are so strong, would-be acquirers occasionally drop by. Mr Huang’s answer: not now, not ever.

黄先生认为这是比买股票或债券（两者都是他避免的）要好得多的投资方式。对股票和债券无法用同一种方法进行详细的信用评估。因为纽约第一银行的业绩太好了，时不时就会有人上门，意欲收购。对此，黄先生的态度是：现在不卖，以后也不卖。

His strategy does entail some risks. Amerasia is vulnerable to the collapse of the Flushing economy, because that is where Mr Huang finds new customers, and because he continues to hold loans tied to local businesses. Amerasia is so small, with fewer than 40 employees, that it is vulnerable to being swamped by regulatory costs. Yet as Mr Huang’s industry has shown in recent years, there are worse ways to go about running a bank.

他的策略确实带来了一些风险。纽约第一银行很容易受法拉盛经济衰退的影响，因为黄先生就是在那里寻找客户的，而且他一直持有当地商户的贷款。纽约第一银行规模太小，员工不到40人，很容易因监管成本过高而陷入困境。但近年来，黄先生所在的行业表明，经营银行还有很多比这更糟的方法。