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Quiet quitting, where you don’t quit the job but no longer subscribe to the culture that work is your life, is alien to Hong Kong’s diligent finance worker bees. But conditions are ripe for them to stop hustling for a while. Say no to 12-hour days and late-night conference calls.
This year, few are expecting blow-out bonuses that would give them the financial freedom to, say, retire by 50. Equity sales receive commissions when there is trading. But turnover on the Hong Kong bourse has been at its lowest in two years, as the Hang Seng Index bleeds towards the March 2020 low.
Investment bankers are not getting deals done, either. They are disappointed by the lack of progress in the listing revivals of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s fintech affiliate Ant Group Co and ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc. Such blockbuster share sales are unlikely to happen until at least next March, when the Chinese legislature installs new watchdogs to regulate stock listings, according to The Information.
For years, bankers avidly arranged bonds and syndicated loans for China’s high-yield real estate developers. But with about one-third of the top 100 builders in default or asking for loan extensions, Hong Kong’s offshore dollar bond market is essentially closed. Even Shanghai-based private equity giant Fosun International Ltd, which has limited exposure to China’s slumping property market, is struggling with refinancing.
The high-yield corporate bond market might just recover if developers can show quick resolution to their overdue debt, as was the case with Shenzhen-based Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd in 2015. However, any restructuring plan, no matter how comprehensive and well thought out, depends on the recovery of actual apartment sales. With China still avidly hanging onto its Covid-zero policy, abruptly shutting
down megacities from Shanghai to Chengdu, any restructuring blueprint is only as valuable as the paper it is written on.
Even commercial bankers are not cheering. While US mortgage rates topped 6% for the first time since 2008, home loan rates in Hong Kong — which in theory should be in lockstep with the US because of the dollar peg — are at paltry 2.75%. At this rate, HSBC Holdings Plc can earn only 30 basis points spread over 1-month Hibor.
The culprit is anemic demand. The loan-to-deposit ratio in the city never recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
—Bloomberg