Hong Kong's status as financial hub is to be challenged by Shanghai and Singapore

In the past few years, several reports assured that Hong Kong will soon have to let go of its long-held position as Asia’s most influential International Financial controller; but interestingly, the capital has time and again crushed these assumptions.

However, this time it seems there is no escape and the prophecy is most likely to come true. For years, this city has maintained its stature because of the flexibility of the financial laws and as a result, encouraged China to accommodate the global markets and draw the leading financial initiators towards it, having many financial players have deep roots there. Yet by several measures the future isn’t so bright. Hong Kong now handles fewer stock trades than Shanghai. Its wealth management industry is struggling to keep assets as Singapore’s grows. Its taxes are low, but rents are sky high.

The present scenario, nevertheless, has a distinct story to relate altogether; today, the number of stocks enrolled under it is five lesser in number when compared with Shanghai and additionally, its wealth management industry parallelly, is witnessing infinite challenges to keep up with the pace of Singapore’s growth.

Now pro-democracy protests are disrupting daily life, battering the local economy into a recession and angering decision makers in Beijing. Taking into consideration the live situation, any institution looking forward to investing would inevitably resort to Shanghai and Singapore.

In the following section, we will be evaluating the ways in which Hong Kong builds up its key numbers in the descending order.

• The stock offerings
According to business and economic analysts, the most important role of a city is to strategically manage assets by including fundraising events. Hong Kong efficiently garners these conditions as it is regarded as one of the prime destinations for initial public offerings. As per last year’s statistics, the city raised a total of $36.8n billion thus, officially placing it on the world map as the busiest venue. On the other hand, Shanghai too is undertaking strapping means to hurl challenges to its competitor; and these adjustments are further catalyzed by the amended government policies and turning their favors to equity markets for the financial market rather than borrowing.

• Trading center
Hong Kong still officially remains as the hub of all financial proceedings in China, but gradually Shanghai is emerging with similar vitality to pose competition as most Chinese companies choose the latter when it comes to raising money domestically. Apart from that, Shanghai is the primary recourse when it comes to welcoming market swings and retail investors hence, enhancing its trading capacity.

• Money management techniques
Even though Hong Kong is considered to be the stalwart of money management, the stockpile of assets is plunging at an equal rate. This has convinced its clients, for instance, Goldmann Sachs Group to relocate their investors worth $4 billion to Singapore sourcing from the civil unrest in August. Within the end of September, Singapore came across the highest foreign currency deposit ever recorded in the country. Premium banks including Standard Chartered and HSBC Holdings claimed that in the course of the preceding week, some customers are willing to review their contingency plans regarding the amount of cash deposited in the city.

• The rate of economic growth
People who are in favor of Hong Kong’s economic arrangement have asserted that the shift of limelight can be attributed to the lagging behind of local economy as opposed to Shanghai’s rapid escalation of the same. According to Hubert Tse, a shareholder at the law firm of Boss and Young in Shanghai, the city has benefitted from its status as the financial pivot of the country and the country’s contribution to expanding the economy and internationalizing the Yuan.

• Local life
China holds the 28th rank in the world when it comes to delineating its place in the Global Competitive Index of 2019 hosted by the World Economic Forum; its primary city Hong Kong has been staked at number 3, while Singapore strongly holds the first rank. China lags in the rate of taxes, which is in turn affected by the regular course of like including living standards, international schools and universities along with the food offered.

Source: Straits Times

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Hong Kong's status as financial hub is to be challenged by Shanghai and Singapore

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