HONG KONG: The Asia Pacific Loan Market Association opens the first global conference in its 12 year history today, luring bankers to a region whose lenders lost less than their US and European peers in the financial crisis.

The credit freeze following Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s 2008 failure was “more of an occidental crisis than an oriental crisis,” Philip Cracknell, global head of syndications at London-based Standard Chartered Plc, said in an interview before a speech to the APLMA meeting in Hong Kong. “Asia has been less affected, and there’s a transition of economic power from West to East in the new world order that’s developing.”

Asian financial companies had $42.3 billion of losses and writedowns since the US subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s less than 8% of the losses recorded in Europe and below 4% of the Americas tally, the data show.

HSBC Holdings Plc will move its strategy team to Hong Kong from London because the “real action” is in Asia’s expanding economies, Chief Executive Officer Michael Geoghegan said Feb. 1 after his own relocation to the city. The US economy came “very close” to collapsing into a second Great Depression during the credit crisis, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Feb. 2, after President Barack Obama proposed to limit the size of banks as a way to reduce risk-taking.

While global syndicated lending plunged 66% to $1.4 trillion last year from $4.1 trillion in 2007, loans in Asia excluding Japan dropped 26% to $204 billion in the same period, according to Bloomberg data.

Underwriter Ranking

Bank of China Ltd. was the only Asian bank among the top 10 underwriters of Asia ex-Japan loans in 1999, the data show. Last year HSBC and Standard Chartered were the only lenders based outside Asia in the same ranking.

Julian Van Kan, global head of loan syndications for BNP Paribas SA, Tim Ritchie, head of global loan syndication at Barclays Capital and Stefania Berla, the International Finance Corp.’s global head of syndication, are among speakers at today’s conference, according to a preliminary schedule provided by the APLMA.

“Asia is very important to BNP Paribas,” Van Kan said in a phone interview. “The markets here, whilst unique, also look to the US and Europe for trends and operating practices.”