East West Opens Bank Site in Beijing

East West Bancorp Inc., the San Marino-based banking company whose clients mainly are ethnic Chinese, will announce today that it has opened a representative office in Beijing.

Since East West specializes in trade finance, the Beijing facility will be “a great service for their customers, like a business office with access to all your finances,” said Mark Agah, a banking analyst with RBC Capital Markets in San Francisco.

East West’s chief executive, Dominic Ng, said the new office is more than a stopping point for its executives and existing clients. It’s also intended to attract new trade finance customers, and it will be staffed by a senior vice president, K.Y. Cheng, and three additional staff members, Ng said.

East West executives said they believe that China, in addition to exporting goods to this country, increasingly will become an importer of specialty U.S. services such as resort design and pollution control.

-- E. Scott Reckard