Goodbye HK, hello S'pore

More global firms moving staff and ops out of Hong Kong despite city's efforts to retain them

- Magdalene Fung

Hong Kong is now fully back in business and it wants the world to know.

Since its reopening after three years of Covid-19 isolation, the city has gone all out to woo back the mainstays of its economy.

From foreign students and big businesses to tourists, art enthusiasts and the clubbing crowd, it is leaving no stone unturned.

In his annual policy speech on Oct 25, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced that the city would develop its "headquarters economy" to attract enterprises from the world over to set up their bases here.

For many big multinational corporations (MNCs), however, it may have come a little too late.

Some have publicly and completely relocated their regional headquarters out of a city that once consistently topped rankings of global companies' choices of where to set up their Asian hubs.

But more enterprises have been taking a subtler route, discreetly moving large parts of their staff and operations elsewhere and redefining what a head office means.

While the number of global companies with regional headquarters in Hong Kong has fallen some 8.4 per cent since 2019, the number of staff engaged by such firms has dropped by a whopping 30 per cent in the same period, according to official data.

And many of these MNCs are opting for Singapore, even as they welcome Hong Kong's latest raft of business-friendly measures.

'CAN'T PUT ALL EGGS IN ONE BASKET'

Logistics giant DHL, for example, has been rapidly expanding its operations in Singapore.

In 2022, the American-founded German MNC inked a four-year deal with Singapore Airlines for the national carrier's crew to fly DHL freighters based at Changi Airport on cargo routes between parts of Asia and North America.

In October, it launched an additional route - from Singapore to the United States via Japan - under that partnership.