The city kicked off a Fintech conference on Monday with some of Wall Street’s top executives set to attend the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit beginning Tuesday, while the iconic Rugby Sevens tournament returns for the first time in three years.
But a typhoon barreling toward the city and several senior executives pulling out of the summit at the last minute got the packed week off to an inauspicious start. Another snafu: Hong Kong financial secretary Paul Chan was unable to give an opening speech in person as he was stuck in the Middle East with Covid, although he’s scheduled to return on Tuesday after a negative rapid test result.
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and Blackstone president Jonathan Gray will not be coming after they contracted the virus, according to company spokespersons, and Barclays said its CEO, C.S. Venkatakrishnan, had scrapped plans to travel to Asia.
Citigroup will instead send Anand Selva, CEO of Citi’s Personal Banking & Wealth Management unit, and Blackstone’s global CFO Michael Chae will attend in place of Fraser.
Last week, US lawmakers and Hong Kong activists living abroad publicly criticised business leaders’ plans to attend an event headlined by Chief Executive John Lee, who is under US sanctions for his role in a crackdown on civil liberties since Beijing imposed a national security law on the city in mid-2020.
The attendance of some 200 guests from major global banks, asset managers and hedge funds, including senior HSBC, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs executives, will amount to a “whitewash” of the city’s rights abuses, they said.
Some executives have told Nikkei Asia they decided to pass on a trip to Hong Kong, while others said they see little chance of boosting the appeal of a city that still imposes virus travel restrictions, although the curbs have been waived for summit attendees.
Stewart Aldcroft, formerly Asia chair of Citibank unit Cititrust, said this year’s summit topics were “not very impressive”.
Regional rival Singapore, meanwhile, is trying to take advantage of the situation by hosting high-profile events. Last month, it ran a Formula One race.
“I assume,” Aldcroft said, “it is of more benefit for Hong Kong to say the speakers came (rather) than for their words to be meaningful.”
While Hong Kong has been loosening its virus constraints – it has dropped a mandate for arrivals to quarantine for up to three weeks in a hotel – the city’s self-imposed isolation during most of the pandemic badly damaged its role as one of the world’s premier business and aviation centres.
Strict virus rules and Beijing’s clampdown have triggered an exodus of residents and expatriates and forced the relocation of sporting and business events. Hong Kong’s hard-hit economy shrunk 4.5% in the July-September period, its worst quarterly performance since 2020.
Current virus measures – including outdoor mask-wearing and for arriving visitors to self-isolate for three days – have hurt efforts to lure back international exhibitions, with some local business fairs running at a “fraction of their normal size”, said Stuart Bailey, chairman of the Hong Kong Exhibition & Convention Industry Association.
“They’ll get some good PR out of” this week’s events, he said, “but for most people, we need it to be completely restriction free”.
This weekend’s rugby showcase has sold about 8,500 of the 10,000 tickets on offer. Ahead of previous tournaments, tickets were instantly snapped up quickly and tens of thousands of foreign fans would descend on the city in a spending blitz that in 2017 reached 400 million Hong Kong dollars (US$51 million).
Corporate box sales this year are down by about 20% from pre-pandemic levels, and the event is mainly targeting local fans.
“But hopefully, this is a way to help some of the sectors in Hong Kong that have really struggled and are continuing to struggle even though things are improving,” said Robbie McRobbie, CEO of the city’s Rugby Union. This week’s “activities are important milestones as we progress to, hopefully, the end leg of that journey back to normality”.