Thursday, February 10, 2011

Now I've Heard It All: East West Ethnobank

East West Bank? Contemporary settlement? Ethnobank? Ethnoburb?

What gives?

No, not a new geo-political reality.

A bank.

Really:-

East West Bank, headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., was founded in Chinatown in 1972 as a savings and loan, to provide home loans to Chinese Americans...[and recently]...surpassed Los Angeles’s longtime heavyweight City National Bank in market value, reporting earnings 25 percent higher than City National.

"It shows the growing impact of Chinese Americans as part of the fabric of the country," comments Professor Li, whose 2001 research article on Chinese "ethnobanks" in Los Angeles identified East West as already on the fast track to the mainstream...East West is “by far the largest bank with a core clientele of ethnic Chinese.” It also has three branches in China.

Professor Li, who earned a PhD in geography from the University of Southern California...is credited with coining the term 'ethnoburb' to describe a new form of contemporary suburban Asian settlement.

How about that.

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