Hooked on Asia

THERE is a beautiful diversity in the Asia-Pacific that is striking for Francisco Aristeguieta, who has been heading Citi's Asia-Pacific operations just a few months shy of two years. After spending much of his two-decade banking career overseeing the Latin American markets, the Venezuelan is now watching over Citi's largest market outside of the United States. In this part of the world, wealth is being built at a rapid clip, countries are driven to grow, and flows across the region can have a healthy multiplier effect in bolstering intra-Asian trade.

"Here, you have a little bit of everything. And you travel two, three hours, and you move from a monarchy, to a single-party-system country, to a democracy," says Mr Aristeguieta, who cuts a tall and sharp presence in a meeting room in Singapore, where The Business Times is interviewing him.

"We also have a unique situation, which is we have one country, that is oversized, within the region, and that, I think, is fairly unique to Asia. Where you have China, which is such an important element around trade, and around geopolitics for the region, it's something you have to work with, if you want to succeed in Asia. China has generated a tremendous amount of benefit to many of these countries, by opening its market." This contrasts with his background in Latin America, which tends to be more homogeneous, and "very Catholic".