Hong Kong officials announced various plans to further promote the city’s status as a global financial center and corridor for Greater Bay Area opportunities.
According to Hong Kong’s financial secretary Paul Chan Mo-po, measures would be introduced to encourage more private equity funds to set up and conduct fundraising for Shenzhen-based tech startups. The government will also seek to introduce measures that attract more family offices to establish in Hong Kong.
«Attracting private equity funds and family offices to come to Hong Kong will be the two future developments to allow the city’s financial sector to capture the opportunities arising from the development of the Greater Bay Area,» Chan said, during a recent event, «Connect Hall», hosted by 10 financial services industry bodies.
More Opportunities
Chan also highlighted Greater Bay Area opportunities including the expansion of «connect» programs which have thus far included stocks and bonds.
«The Greater Bay Area is going to provide more opportunities to Hong Kong,» Chan shared. «There will be more cross-border connect schemes in future. After the stock connect and bond connect, we continue to look at insurance connect and wealth management connect in future.»
«No Reason» for Fitch Downgrade
Also present at the event was local chief executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor who underlined at the same event that there was «no reason to change the credit rating of Hong Kong».
«Even though Hong Kong faces overseas markets’ uncertainties and local social unrest over the past three months, the banking and financial markets work well and the exchange rate is stable,” she said. «The rule of law and free flow of capital and talent have not been affected by the recent incidents.»
Chan added to Cheng’s statements, noting that a lesson has been learned by the Hong Kong government. «The government has learned a lesson from the social events over the last two months,» he said. «We will listen to different sectors to improve the economy and the society.»
