Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman says Australia needs to balance a healthy relationship with both the United States and China.
Speaking at the Keith Murdoch Oration at the State Library Victoria on Tuesday night Mr Gorman, the Melbourne-born CEO who has headed one of Wall Street’s biggest investment banks for more than a decade, said: “Trade is China’s umbilical cord”.
Mr Gorman said that bank runs and government intervention in the banking sector were a fact of life because “you can’t regulate away fear”. Arsineh Houspian
“Australia needs China to consume its iron ore, coal, and other products ... currently somewhere between 30 to 40 per cent of Australia’s exports are to China ... [and] China needs access to the world,” Mr Gorman said in comments prepared for delivery to an audience of business, media and political elite.
Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch, NAB CEO Ross McEwan, investment banker John Wylie, former Victorian Premier John Brumby, Sanjeev Gupta and Allan and Maria Myers were scheduled to attend.
“Australia can and should forge alliances, respect its neighbours, and treat all countries as relationships to be developed but not co-opted. An alliance with the US and the UK does not violate that objective, nor does trade with China. We should look forward to many decades of US/China/Australia trade and understand the inevitable issues that will be part of that journey,” he said.

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform.