11-4, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, www.bos.frb.org. Giavazzi, Franscesco and Frederic S. Mishkin (2006), An evaluation of Swedish monetary policy 1995–2005, 200/607:RFR 1. Goodhart, Charles and Jean-Charles Rochet (2011), Assessment of the Riksbank’s monetary policy and work with financial stability 2005–2010, 2010/11:RFR 5. Nessén, Marianne and David Vestin (2005), “Average inflation targeting”, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking 37(5), 837–63. Qvigstad, Jan F. (2005), “When does an interest rate path ‘look good’? Criteria for an appropriate future interest rate path – A practician’s approach”, Staff Memo No. 2005/6, Norges Bank. SFS 1988:1385, Sveriges Riksbank Act in its wording as of 1 July 2011, Stockholm: Riksdagen. Svensson, Lars E.O. (2004), “Commentary” [on Laurence H. Meyer, “Practical Problems and Obstacles to Inflation Targeting”], Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review 84(4) (July/August 2004), 161–164. Svensson, Lars E.O. (2011), “Practical Monetary Policy, Examples from Sweden and the United States”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2011, 289–332. Svensson, Lars E.O. (2012), “The possible unemployment cost of average inflation below a credible target”, Working Paper, www.larseosvensson.net. Swedish government (1997), Riksbankens ställning (the position of the Riksbank), government bill 1997/98:40. Swedish government (2012), 2012 Spring Fiscal Policy Bill, government bill 2011/12:100. Sveriges Riksbank (2004), “Changes in Calculation Methods for the Inflation Rate,” Inflation Report 2004/2, 45–48. BIS central bankers’ speeches  15  Sveriges Riksbank (2010), “Minutes of the monetary policy meeting, no. 3”, 30 June 2010. Sveriges Riksbank (2012a), Financial Stability Report 2012:1, 1 June 2012. Sveriges Riksbank (2012b), “Minutes of the monetary policy meeting, no. 2”, 17 April 2012.
Recognising the potency of marketing, I set up in 2010 within the HKMA a new team dedicated to reaching out to promote Hong Kong as the premier international financial centre (IFC) in Asia. One of the priority areas that our team has sought to promote, which is highly relevant to our treasury practitioners, is clearly the use of Hong Kong as the corporate treasury management hub for multinational companies as well as Mainland corporates with increasingly larger business footprint offshore. Our team has in the past year alone reached out to nearly 300 companies. 3. Many corporates that we have approached recognise the attractiveness of Hong Kong as an IFC. Hong Kong is a major banking centre with mature and sophisticated capital markets. Our financial system is resilient and is underpinned by a robust regulatory regime. We have first class transport and communications infrastructure. There is a large cluster of finance and legal professionals and talents etc. Yes, we do have a long list of advantages that we can deploy to lobby corporates to come to Hong Kong to set up corporate treasury centres (CTCs) to manage their cash, FX, credit, hedging, interest rates transactions. However, the HKMA outreaching team soon realised that they had run into a major problem. The problem had to do with the tax asymmetry that treated CTCs’ overseas interest expenses and income differently.