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Hong Kong officials have typically reacted with nonchalance to questions about the city’s record population exodus. Financial flows show the territory retains its hub status, business confidence is unshaken, those departing are denying themselves a role in a prosperous future. Or so some of the familiar arguments run. The Securities and Futures Commission’s (SFC) staffing struggles offer a different perspective.
The statutory regulator says it lost 12% of employees last year, including 25% of junior professional staff. Those remaining are doing 12-hour days to cope with the workload, Kiuyan Wong of Bloomberg News reported, citing former employees. The SFC warned in a budget statement that it won’t be able to deliver
on initiatives underpinning Hong Kong’s development as an international financial center without appropriate staffing. Chief Executive Ashley Alder told lawmakers that employee turnover was affecting commission’s work.
It isn’t straightforward to get a precise handle on the size and impact of Hong Kong’s outflow of human talent. This is the combined product of political change following the imposition of a national security law in July 2020 and seemingly endless Covid restrictions that are now being intensified even further with plans to test the entire city. The starkest statistic is the loss of 89,200 residents, or 1.2% of the population, in the 12 months through June, the most recent figure available. That’s the biggest recorded decline since 1961.
Without a breakdown of who is leaving and what their skills are, though, assessing the effect on Hong Kong’s business and financial talent pool is an inexact science. Anecdotally, it’s
significant. The European Union and American Chambers of Commerce have both complained of accelerating outward migration making it harder for global companies to hire. The city’s Covid-zero policy has deterred people from moving in; one headhunter told Bloomberg News that “no amount of money†would convince a candidate to go to Hong Kong. There have been scattered examples of companies, such as Citigroup, relocating employees elsewhere in Asia.
—Bloomberg