Bob Grant Senior Vice President Global Transaction Banking Sales at Scotiabank

These days you can't go far without being confronted by the continuing turmoil in the world's financial markets. Here in Canada, we are beginning to feel the affects of the downturn with lower manufacturing activity and loss of momentum across goods- and service-producing industries. However, Canada is doing much better than most countries and our relatively stable financial system has become a model for other countries.

As a Canadian bank and even more so as an international bank, we are prudent in how we manage our risk and control costs. Recently, Scotiabank was ranked among the top 10 most stable banks in the world, according to a global ranking of the financial sector developed by the Oliver Wyman Group. We are extremely proud of this ranking and look to continue to maintain this stability as we meet the needs of our customers and the business challenges they face in Canada and around the world.

In this issue of InterAction, we discuss the trade environment and the issues importers and exporters are facing. As well, we feature a client whose successful business in trading agricultural commodities has expanded to over 50 countries, and is still growing.

If you're a subscriber of InterAction, you'll also notice that we've enhanced our look and feel to provide broader content and more interactivity. Since discontinuing our print version earlier this year, we have enhanced our online presence to offer a more robust resource for your business. Along with easier access to our articles and news items, podcasts and other features are now a regular part of InterAction.

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