Banks including HSBC Holdings PLC, Standard Chartered PLC and Citigroup Inc have seen a spike in inquiries from Hong Kong residents about opening offshore accounts amid concerns stemming from China’s decision to impose national security legislation on the territory, five people said.
HSBC and Standard Chartered have each seen a 25 to 30 percent jump in inquiries, two of the people said.
The queries add to concerns about capital flight from the Asian financial hub, which has been roiled by pro-democracy protests in the past year, and underline worries about the liquidity of assets as the proposed legislation inflames China-US tensions.
US President Donald Trump has said he is to strip Hong Kong of its special status under US law if China moves ahead with the legislation that aims to curb sedition, secession, terrorism and foreign interference.
“What I’m worried about the most is I might not be able to freely exchange Hong Kong dollars anymore if the US decided to sanction Hong Kong,” said 39-year-old May Chan, who has asked HSBC about opening an offshore account.
The territory’s central bank has sought to allay concerns, saying it has all the means necessary to defend the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the greenback.
None of the leading global retail banks with operations in the territory have seen large outflows of deposits in the past two weeks, said two of the sources, adding that it can take at least a month to open an offshore account.
However, the rise in inquiries has been strong enough to slow banks’ response times, the sources said, adding that Singapore, the UK, Australia and Taiwan are popular destinations.
Chan was told by HSBC that she would have to wait a month just to get information about opening an offshore account.
She has already changed 70 percent of her savings into foreign currencies, including US dollars and British pounds.
“If things get messy here I might not even be able to transfer my money out in the worst-case scenario, so it’s good to diversify risks,” she said.
While authorities say the legislation would target only a small number of “troublemakers,” critics say it could erode the territory’s high degree of autonomy.
Many Hong Kong residents are renewing their British National Overseas passport, after the proposed legislation prompted the UK to offer a potential refuge to the almost 3 million eligible for it.
“Now is the second wave of opening offshore accounts; the first wave was after June last year during the protests,” said one of the sources, referring to sometimes violent unrest against a now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed people to be extradited to the mainland.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
At least US$50 million for the freedom of an Emirati sheikh: That is the king’s ransom paid two weeks ago to militants linked to al-Qaeda who are pushing to topple the Malian government and impose Islamic law. Alongside a crippling fuel blockade, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) has made kidnapping wealthy foreigners for a ransom a pillar of its strategy of “economic jihad.” Its goal: Oust the junta, which has struggled to contain Mali’s decade-long insurgency since taking power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, by scaring away investors and paralyzing the west African country’s economy.
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
RSS