Those were the days when we followed her wake, our boss….Agnes

It was eight forty in the morning; the usually uproarious trading room exuded a little bit nervous ambience through its unusual tranquility. Some people lowered their head and read documents silently, others cast their glances over the door, restless; certainly there must be someone hastily devoured his or her breakfast. Only sporadic phone rings did break this transient silence before the prima donna finally appeared about eight fifty as expected. Sotto voce, she simply uttered, “let’s begin.”, and the traders, one by one, hastened to analyzed the market situation of the day. Gradually the strained faces were loosened as she nodded with the smile of approval. Now a hard day’s work actually began. Who had such a charisma? It was SVP and the General Manager of the Treasury Department, head of our family, Agnes.

No sooner had she graduated from college than she joined the Bank. The tricks of the trade must be finely honed through practice, and bank business is no exception. Agnes started her career from Foreign Department through various branches to Comptroller Department, Wealth Management Department, integrally experiencing businesses of deposit, foreign exchange, accounting, import & export, wealth management, etc. From every aspect, Agnes should have been solely responsible for one section earlier; nevertheless, lacking overseas experience might short of our brand name: International Bank. So Agnes applied the job in New York Branch, located at the world’s financial center before being afflicted by the storm of subprime, carrying out the task of all of the Bank’s fund transfer. Needless to say, unlike divisions in head quarter; branch offices, especially in foreign countries are not sufficiently supported either in workforce or resources. In addition to all sorts of work, she must orient herself to the new environment, and look after both her job and family. What a mission impossible it would be! Having successfully gone through the ordeal in the Big Apple for seven years, enhanced her capabilities in finance field, she return to the Head Quarter, and got in close connection with Treasury Department henceforth.

Remember that “Formosa Bond”? It was a windfall for almost every investor, profiting from the spread both in conversion and interest out of that highly popular product, and Agnes was the key person of the back-room boys. In 2010, the Bank was awarded by Taiwan Academy of Banking and Finance (TABF) the prime prize of 5th“best international promotion”, which was cheery-picked from 51 cases contributed from 35 institutions. Save for the visionary leadership from both the Chairman and the President, Agnes’ excellent performance made the plan bear fruit. Another fruit matured in December, also of 2010, when the ground-breaking “US Dollar RTGS Payment System” was first introduced. The freshly-minted banking facilities provided the clientele a swift, convenient and low-cost platform for dollar exchange, facilitating available, real-time dollar on hand as long as telex messages were sent out, without eagerly waiting for the fund from New York any more, thus greatly elevated the efficiency of fund transfer. Likewise, the Chairman and the President took the helm, and Agnes, leading her smart team, rowed the boat ashore, throughout various difficulties including business planning and manpower recruiting at the beginning, and promotion and marketing later on. This remarkable undertaking made the Bank maintain its stature as number one brand in foreign exchange business.

Insisting on replacing IT system would suffice to demonstrate Agnes’ decisiveness and vision. Although this SUMMIT system might be unfamiliar to other people, it was inseparable from the trading business of banking, for the existing but old MIDAS system had been unable to tackle the problems of enormous load and ever-complicated financial trading of daily transaction. The new system was capable of integrating the ledgering, transacting, recording, inquiring and risk controlling on various items of trading, which had been more unaffected and cost-effective. The forthcoming on-line of SUMMIT, under the auspices of IT Division, will thoroughly remold the trading system of Treasury Division, just like a tremendous change from labor-intensive export zone to sophisticated Technic Park, greatly improving our trading competiveness. Recently, our STD (Structured Deposit) business was booming, but the trading mainly hinged upon other banks’ system became less and less reliable in our own business expansion. So in the long run, we had to build ourselves up to a comprehensive STD trading system, better still, and nurture option traders of our own, for the best policy was to get hold of the STD quotations from the very origin, which was the top level of option’s multi-dimensional technics. To install STD once again proved Agnes’ resolution and courage in making decision. All members of staff were inspired, sparing no effort, encouraging one another, making a vow that the first phase of installation must be completed before she retired, and we did it. The quotation trial system of STD will

Be on-line step by step from March, 2012: the last month that Agnes was serving the Bank.

Not long ago there was a youth movies of record-breaking box office, kind of chick lit, with a similar title to this article. Maybe you had watched it too. I didn’t mean that Agnes had been everybody’s dream lover, but she was more than qualified to be everybody’s dream boss. As a lady in high managerial position, Agnes had never been an amazon (she is tall, though) of the office, not threw her wight arround, ever. Instead, she was always amiable and considerate towards every one of us, making us feel like blowing in the spring breeze. You could always feel that she treated us like her family: no matter a short small talk made in the drinking room or in the elevator parlor, a nod with smile exchanged in the pathway, or a warm pep talk at the end of trading in afternoon. In order to learn more trading technics and knowledge, she would never be reluctant dispatching us to relevant seminars abroad. In the year-end Auld Lang Syne party she would merit and award the overachievers in public. All kinds of everything she did to us were gentle encouragement and friendly persuasion in lieu of harsh reprimand, never. Whenever Treasury Division had any underperformance, and faced opprobrium from the top or other division, Agnes always took the sole accountability and never found anyone’s to blame. How lucky we were, being able to work for such a nice boss and spend a stint of happy times! Equally lucky was we had shared together with Agnes the stress, pain, joy and pride during last several years.

Tempus fregit! Forty-three years passed in a flash, and Agnes will leave the only wonderland (no enterprise of happiness, the Director so demanded) she had been staying ever since she graduated from college: the Bank, our Bank. “When pub is closed, I’ll leave.” Agnes, please just lay down everything but leave your heart here, and start an easy life seven days a week. Please also drop by sometime because you’ll have plenty of time anyway.