A deep understanding of risks provides the foundation for stability and growth. The research and educational activities of EDHEC-Risk Institute will help enhance our understanding of risks, and the development of talent. We welcome EDHEC-Risk Institute to our research and financial community in Asia. Your presence adds to another important strand in the deepening relationship between France and Singapore. I congratulate EDHEC-Risk Institute on the opening of its Asian centre, and wish Professor Amenc, Professor Ducoulombier and your colleagues every success. 19. 4  Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches
And even those who look mainly to the United States - where both the market and the currency relationship have been more stable - faced intensified competition from the rest of the world. BIS Review 5/2000  2  These effects were not, of course, peculiar to Scottish businesses. They applied equally to all similarly internationally-exposed businesses throughout the UK. Each region has its own particular business characteristics so that some were affected more than others - with some English regions worse affected than the overall economy here in Scotland. But the effects were just as damaging to similar businesses wherever they were located, so that the differential impact was felt within regions throughout the UK not just between them. These cries of pain from the most severely affected businesses and sectors right across the UK I really do understand. The question is what can we do about it through the operation of monetary policy? The problems - as I have explained - derive essentially from developments abroad, and there is not much that we can do directly about them, although both the Bank and the Government are very actively involved in the wider international debate on how to bring about greater stability and better balance in the global economy. Of course we take full account, in our forecasts and in our policy judgements, of the implications of the international environment for our own economy. That is why we moved aggressively to cut interest rates from the autumn of 1998 and early last year.