You will hear an interview with the CEO of Standard Bank Group, Jacko Maree, on reflecting how multinationals might approach doi

You will hear an interview with the CEO in Standard Bank Group, Jacko Maree, on reflecting how multinationals might approach doing business in developing countries.
For each question 23-30, mark one letter(A, B or C)for the correct answer.
After you have listened once, replay the recording.
You have 45 seconds to read through the questions.
[pause]
Now listen, and mark A, B or C.
[pause]
Woman: Today, we have Jacko Maree. Nice to meet you, Mr. Maree.
Man: Great to be here. Just call me Jacko, please.
Woman: So, Jacko, what advice would you have for multinationals looking to do business in Africa?
Man: The most important question is, are you going to do it alone or are you going to work with partners? Sometimes having a local partner is really the most obvious way to go. Clearly, you always need advice from someone who understands the local environment. In a number of the countries in which we operate, we have chosen to work in formal partnerships. In some geographies, we have tried to position ourselves firstly as a local player and secondly as a multinational. For major multinationals looking to expand on the African continent, a key question is whether you have sufficient resources to tackle the challenge.
Woman: Africa has a reputation as a risky place to do business. How should a multinational think about risk there?
Man: Whenever you go into developing countries, you are exposed to different risks from those you might be used to if you’re sitting in London or New York and thinking in a developed-country paradigm. There are risks in doing business in Africa, but no more than some of the Latin American economies or even Russia and Asia. The question is how to manage those risks once you’ve understood them. We spend a huge amount of time getting to grip with the particular risks that may occur in some of these countries and then try to mitigate them.
Woman: Are there any examples that you could illustrate this?
Man: In Nigeria, for example, we own 50.1 percent of Stanbic IBTC Bank. The remaining shares are owned by the general public and the founder of IBTC. We feel that the structure helps mitigate the risks, because we have positioned ourselves as a local institution with local shareholders. In Russia, where we merged our bank with a very successful investment-banking operation called Troika Dialog in 2009, we were prepared to reduce our economic interest to 36 percent. Our view was that it was better for us to be in a strategic minority position, because we think that improves our risk profile, not to mention the commercial benefits we gain from having teamed up with an excellent partner.
Woman: Is that your point?
Man: Yes, understanding risk is more than just a financial concern. One has to be mindful of ensuring that you’re seen to be helpful and relevant to the local economies rather than just extracting profits by providing a service. When you’re dealing with developing countries, the issue of the social relevance of your company is completely different from when you’re dealing with a developed economy.
Woman: What is Standard’s aspiration for expansion in Africa?
Man: We are trying to position ourselves as the "go to" bank for the African continent. As a growing financial-services group, you can build domestic businesses, and you can also build cross-border businesses. We are trying to do both. We are trying to build scale businesses locally and then use that platform to link those countries to other emerging markets in a banking sense.
Woman: Are there any questions that you do have before your proposal?
Man: The question is, where do you start? For obvious reasons, we started in southern Africa and expanded northward. We haven’t yet really entered French-speaking Africa. I have no doubt that, if our strategy remains successful, it will only be a matter of time before we do find ourselves in more countries. North Africa will probably be the last move for us, because many of those countries probably see themselves as closer culturally and economically to the surrounding Mediterranean countries and the Middle East.
Woman: Why could this happen?
Man: Because we are present in 17 African countries. We’ve got a significant enough base to position ourselves as a bank that can assist multinationals with the full spectrum of financial solutions across the continent. We have the ability to link emerging markets in Africa to our network in Argentina, Brazil, China, Russia, and Turkey, to name a few. You can’t do that if you’ve only got a small number of countries in your portfolio...