ABROAD AT HOME

While some companies are busy looking for opportunities in Asia now that Suharto is gone, Charles Schwab Corp. has found Asian opportunity at home on the information superhighway. The San Francisco mutual fund supermarket launched a World Wide Web site in Chinese, the first language of 2% to 3% of its customers. The company has also staffed branches with reps who speak Asian languages and opened offices in heavily Chinese areas.

The Asian customers’ “average balance ($90,000) is about 10% to 20% higher than the average Schwab investor’s and they generally trade twice as often,” says Schwab’s Larry Yu.

Schwab opened an office in the New York borough of Queens bearing the name Jia Xin Li Schi. That translates as something like “We Encourage You to Trust Us Help You Manage Your Assets.”