Recruiters describe enquiry levels and relocation activity as far stronger than the depths of 2023, with momentum building over the past 18 to 24 months.

Demand is concentrated in asset management, private wealth and family offices, with the sharpest growth in roles tied to artificial intelligence integration, compliance and risk.

That is a hard turn from the years after 2019, when street protests, a national security law and some of the world’s strictest pandemic controls emptied trading floors and departure halls in equal measure. The question for anyone weighing a move is whether the pull is a cyclical bounce or something more durable.

What the money actually says
The headline number is striking. Total funds raised in Hong Kong, counting initial public offerings (IPOs) and follow-on issuance, rose 76% year on year to roughly USD 83.5 billion in the first eight months of 2026.

Strip out secondary fundraising and the listings story is stronger still. IPO proceeds alone reached HKUSD 342.4 billion, about USD 43.7 billion, up 153% on the same period a year earlier, according to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing.

The bourse recorded 106 new listings over the eight months, an 80% increase, and closed August with 2,761 listed companies carrying a combined market value of about HKUSD 47.2 trillion. Average daily turnover ran at HKUSD 282.5 billion, 14% higher than a year ago, and topped HKUSD 300 billion in June and July.

The composition matters more than the totals. KPMG’s mid-year review found Hong Kong raised HKUSD 209.9 billion across 85 IPOs in the first half, its best opening six months in five years, with 24 A+H listings and 13 specialist technology flotations together accounting for more than 70% of proceeds.

Both categories had already passed their full-year 2025 tallies by June. This is a market being rebuilt on mainland corporate demand for offshore capital and on a rule change, the Chapter 18C technology route, that Hong Kong wrote for itself.

Globally, Hong Kong finished the first half second only to Nasdaq, which was carried to the top by SpaceX’s $86.3 billion listing, the largest in history. Second place in a year containing that deal is a respectable result.

The wealth crown
Underneath the listings boom sits a quieter structural shift. Boston Consulting Group’s Global Wealth Report 2026 found that cross-border wealth booked in Hong Kong rose 10.7% during 2025 to USD 2.95 trillion, narrowly displacing Switzerland at USD 2.94 trillion and making the city the world’s largest offshore booking centre for the first time.

BCG expects the gap to widen rather than close. Hong Kong and Singapore are each forecast to grow cross-border assets at around 9% a year through 2030, against roughly 6% in Switzerland, leaving Hong Kong near USD 4.6 trillion by the end of the decade.

Global cross-border wealth rose 8.4% to USD 15.7 trillion last year, with the top ten booking centres capturing almost 90% of new offshore flows.

BCG describes offshore wealth clustering into two networks. One is anchored by Hong Kong and Singapore and serves mainland Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian capital.

The other runs through Switzerland, the United States and the United Kingdom and handles European, Middle Eastern and Latin American money.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) remains among the fastest-growing centres, with cross-border wealth up 11.1% last year, but the two large networks are pulling away from everyone else.

For a returning private banker, that is the relevant statistic. Wealth is concentrating into fewer hubs, and Hong Kong is now the largest of them.

The tax bet
Policy has been aimed squarely at the people, not just the capital. In June the government gazetted the Inland Revenue (Amendment) Bill 2026, covering funds, family-owned investment holding vehicles and carried interest.

Its most consequential clause would extend the existing zero rate on eligible carried interest to a far wider set of funds, structures and investment professionals, allow carry to be paid directly or through a carry vehicle, and apply retrospectively from the 2025/26 year of assessment.

The target is unmistakable. Singapore’s variable capital company regime and its family office concessions have drawn Asian wealth managers for the better part of a decade. Hong Kong’s answer is a cleaner personal tax outcome for the people who actually decide where to sit.

The bill went to the Legislative Council in late June and, as of September, has still not completed passage. Anyone modelling a move on the strength of it is pricing in an outcome that is probable rather than certain.

Property is the tell
Commercial property offers the least sentimental read on whether firms are genuinely hiring. JLL revised its forecast for Central Grade A office rents upward to growth of 10% to 15% in 2026, from an earlier projection of zero to 5%, citing leasing demand from financial institutions, IPO-related activity, mainland wealth inflows and the anticipated carried interest exemption.

Central’s vacancy rate has fallen for months and overall Grade A vacancy hit a 31-month low in July.

More telling is where new funds choose to plant themselves. JLL reports that in 2025, seven of every ten new fund setups in Asia picked Singapore, against two for Hong Kong.

In 2026 that has flipped, with more than 70% selecting Hong Kong, and one recent month running closer to eight in ten. Office leasing agents also report foreign tenants accounting for 30% to 40% of recent lettings around Kowloon Station.

The visa data supports it.

Hong Kong approved 31,278 employment visas for foreign nationals in 2025, more than double the figure of five years earlier, with financial services visas up 17% to their highest level since 2022.

South Korea, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States led the inflow.

What has not changed
The Hong Kong that professionals are returning to remains structurally different from the one they left. The 2020 national security law criminalises secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, and has been used against opposition politicians, activists and media figures.

The uncertainty it created over where the lines sit was a real factor in the original exodus. Several years of relative calm appear to have eased those worries for many in finance without removing them.

Employment tells a similarly cautious story. Finance and insurance headcount was running near 268,000 in mid-2025, up 4.5% on the year but still below the 287,800 peak of 2021.

Recruiters describe a market that is functional rather than frenzied, with live roles rising faster than offers and banks still wary after over-hiring in 2021 and 2022 and cutting soon after.

Average merit increases have settled at 3% to 5%, a long way from the bidding wars of the last cycle.

The property recovery is also narrow. Central and Tsimshatsui are tightening while Kowloon East vacancy has been running above 20%, and overall Grade A vacancy near 13.5% reflects years of supply arriving into a shrunken market.

Retail is weaker still, with prime shopping mall vacancy hitting a record 13.7% at the end of June.

Cost is the other quiet constraint. Residential prices found a floor in 2025 after a six-year slide and are now expected to climb again, which is good news for owners and awkward for anyone arriving with a family and a relocation budget set two years ago.

Central rents rising 10% to 15% will feed through to employers as well, and eventually into the pay packages that make the move work.

The largest risk is the one embedded in the success. BCG’s own authors note that Hong Kong is cementing its role as China’s gateway to global markets, and that the same concentration ties the city’s trajectory tightly to economic and regulatory developments on the mainland.

A market whose listings pipeline, wealth inflows and equity performance all depend on one source of capital is not diversified, however large the totals.

The read
The macro backdrop is genuinely strong. GDP grew 5.9% in the first quarter of 2026, the fastest since 2021, and 4.3% in the second, prompting the government to lift its full-year forecast to a range of 3.5% to 4.5%.

The Hang Seng Index added roughly 3,000 points in July alone, its biggest monthly gain in nearly two years.

Hong Kong has recovered its position as a venue.

The harder task, rebuilding the assumption that careers can be planned there over a decade rather than a cycle, is further from done.

The visa numbers say people are arriving. The employment numbers say the industry has not yet grown back.

Both can be true, and for now both are.

The post IF Insights: Hong Kong wins back its bankers as listings machine roars again appeared first on International Finance.

The push is increasingly focused on the Gulf, but is also extending into North Africa and other emerging markets.

The post Hong Kong lays non-stop investment pipeline across MENA appeared first on International Finance.

Around it sits a stack of state-built plumbing, from PayNow and its bilateral links with Thailand’s PromptPay and Malaysia’s DuitNow, to Project Nexus, the multi-country instant payment corridor, to Project Guardian on asset tokenisation and the newer BLOOM initiative, under which Visa and Nium have been piloting stablecoin settlement outside business days.

The tax position helps too. Corporate income tax sits at 17% with exemptions that pull the effective rate lower, there is no capital gains tax, and digital payment tokens are exempt from GST.

Hong Kong was the world’s top IPO venue by funds raised in the first quarter of 2026, with 40 listings raising about HKUSD 109.9 billion, up 488% year on year.

It has also overtaken Switzerland as the largest cross-border wealth hub, with USD 2.95 trillion booked in 2025.

Its digital asset push has been louder. The Stablecoins Ordinance, in force since August 2025, produced Hong Kong’s first licensed issuers in April 2026. But the detail is instructive.

The post Singapore bets SUSD 220 million on fintech just as the money dries up appeared first on International Finance.

The MAS, alongside Singapore’s Ministry of Finance, said on Wednesday it would introduce the exemption for qualifying funds as part of a broader package of measures designed to keep the city state competitive as an asset management hub. Full details of the exemption are expected to be unveiled at Budget 2027, likely in February next year.

The regulator also announced a new program for hedge fund investments intended to anchor large managers in Singapore, though terms have not yet been disclosed.

The post Battle of wealth hubs: Singapore unveils fund manager tax breaks to counter Hong Kong appeared first on International Finance.

Thirteen such companies listed in the first half of this year, against eight in the previous three years put together. Between them, A+H and specialist technology deals accounted for more than 70% of everything raised.

The post IF Insights: The real story behind Hong Kong’s piping-hot IPO machine appeared first on International Finance.

A float in September or October is the widely reported working assumption, although the pace of the past fortnight has put an August debut within reach. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are joint sponsors.

The number that stands out is the valuation. Shein was worth USD 98.2 billion after a private round in 2022 and USD 64 billion after another in 2024.

It is now seeking USD 40 billion to USD 50 billion, and some shareholders have reportedly pushed for a figure closer to USD 30 billion. A draft prospectus published in late July explains the argument.

What Shein actually does
Shein sells very cheap clothing, and a great deal else, straight to shoppers through an app and website. It was founded in China in 2012 by Sky Yangtian Xu, who remains chairman and chief executive, and is now headquartered in Singapore.

It owns almost no factories. Instead it runs a network of mostly Chinese suppliers, feeds them live demand data and orders tiny production runs.

The listing document calls the system large-scale automated test and reorder, or LATR. New products typically launch in batches of 100 to 200 units, response is tracked in real time, and anything that sells can be restocked in as little as five days. Anything that does not is quietly dropped.

That machinery served about 273 million active customers across roughly 160 markets in 2025, up from 186 million in 2023. Clothing remains the core, although its share of revenue has slipped from 68.8% in 2023 to 63.8% in 2025 as beauty, homeware and small electronics have grown.

A third-party marketplace now sits alongside Shein’s own label, and service revenue from those sellers has jumped from USD 868 million in 2023 to USD 4.7 billion in 2025.

Growth that ran into a wall
The growth was real. Revenue climbed from USD 32.1 billion in 2023 to USD 38.8 billion in 2024 and USD 41.9 billion in 2025, a compound annual rate of 14.2%. Shein overtook H&M on revenue and closed in on Inditex, the owner of Zara, in barely a decade.

Then the rules changed. In May 2025 Washington scrapped the de minimis exemption for parcels from China and Hong Kong, and by that August had removed the waiver for every country.

Shipments worth under USD 800 had for nearly a decade entered the United States duty free with light customs scrutiny. A 2023 congressional report estimated Shein and Temu were together behind more than 30% of all such packages arriving daily. The exemption was not a bonus. It was part of the model.

Europe followed. From 1 July 2026 the European Union scrapped its own €150 duty waiver, replacing it with a flat 3 euro charge per item type, an interim measure running to 2028 while a permanent system is built. Nearly 5.9 billion low-value items entered the bloc duty free in 2025, more than four times the 2022 figure.

The financials investors will pick over
Growth has now stalled. First-quarter revenue in 2026 rose just 1.1% to USD 9 billion. Operating profit fell 26% to USD 258 million as marketing and fulfilment costs climbed against flat sales, dragging the operating margin to 2.9% from 3.9%. Net income for 2025 had already fallen 39% to USD 2.06 billion.

The headline USD 99 million quarterly loss is less alarming than it looks in isolation. Most of it stems from a USD 328 million non-cash fair-value charge on convertible redeemable preferred shares, which convert to ordinary stock at listing. Strip that out and the company is still profitable.

The harder problem is the underlying trend, a business earning under three cents of operating profit on every dollar of sales while its two largest markets tighten import rules simultaneously.

There is a second signal. Customer numbers keep climbing, but each shopper still places about four orders a year, as in 2023, slipping to 3.9 in the twelve months to March 2026. Shein is recruiting customers, not getting more out of them.

Europe is now the biggest market
The geographic shift is the filing’s most consequential detail. Europe overtook the United States as Shein’s largest market in 2024, with revenue rising from USD 10.2 billion in 2023 to USD 14.8 billion in 2025, or 35.4% of the total. American revenue fell to 24.1% in 2025 and dropped a further 14% to USD 2 billion in the first quarter of 2026.

Europe is not simply a fallback. Shein reported 155.7 million average monthly users across the bloc for the six months to January 2026, comfortably ahead of Temu, with France, Spain and Italy supplying the largest user bases and Germany the most revenue.

Even here the pace has eased, with user growth slowing to 6.9%. The awkward part is that Europe is now the market applying the tightest regulatory pressure, and the euro 3 duty landed weeks before the prospectus.

The rest of the world now accounts for the largest slice of all at 40.5%, or USD 16.9 billion. Brazil is the standout, although the local manufacturing programme Shein began there in 2023 has been bumpier than planned, with many factories walking away over pricing and turnaround demands.

What Shein has that its rivals do not
Against Temu, the advantage is depth rather than breadth. Temu runs a managed marketplace matching existing inventory to buyers. Shein sits inside the production process itself, which tightens control over design, cost and restocking, and locks suppliers in.

Against Zara, H&M and Primark, the advantage is inventory risk. Traditional retailers commit to seasons months ahead. Shein commits to a few hundred pieces.

Both advantages are built on the Guangdong supplier cluster, and both are harder to replicate abroad, as Brazil has shown. The field is crowding regardless, with AliExpress, Amazon’s discount tier and TikTok Shop chasing the same young, mobile-first shopper. What still separates Shein is that it is a fashion platform first.

Five things to watch in the IPO
It’s important to look at margins over revenue. At 2.9%, the operating margin leaves almost no cushion for further duty increases.

Pricing discipline in the book. Analysts widely doubt Shein will secure much uplift on its 2024 private valuation of USD 64 billion.

IDG Capital and HSG, the rebranded Sequoia Capital China, are the two largest institutional holders at 7.9% and 5.8%, ahead of Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Boyu, Coatue and DST. A soft debut would sting all of them.

Governance is also worth keeping an eye on. Donald Tang, previously executive chairman and the public face of the company in Washington and London, does not appear among directors or senior management.

Regulators in Europe are another hurdle. The European Commission opened Digital Services Act proceedings against Shein in February 2026 over illegal product listings and addictive design. France moved to suspend the platform in late 2025. Mandatory product identifiers arrive in November 2026.

Whether growth outside the West holds is also a big question. Europe and the United States together make up more than half of revenue and both are slowing, leaving the near-term story to Latin America, the Middle East and Asia.

Will US-China tensions derail it
Not the listing itself. That is the point of Hong Kong. New York and London proved impossible precisely because of political scrutiny, and a Hong Kong float sidesteps the American disclosure regime entirely. The trade-off is a narrower investor base and a valuation that reflects it.

The business is a different matter, and the exposure is severe. Shein does not control the rules that set its cost base. The current US-China truce, which cut the effective tariff rate on Chinese goods from around 41% to 31%, runs only to November 10 2026, weeks after Shein expects to list.

Both sides have been working to preserve it, including talks on agricultural tariffs in July, but a lapse would hit Shein’s American unit economics immediately.

The deeper risk is that de minimis repeal is not a US-China issue at all. Europe has done the same thing for its own reasons, and Britain follows in 2028. Shein’s answer is to push more inventory into local warehouses, expand its marketplace and lean on markets where tariffs are not yet the binding constraint.

Investors will decide within weeks whether that answer is worth USD 40 billion.

The post IF Insights: Shein’s Hong Kong IPO faces its hardest sell yet appeared first on International Finance.

As per the outlook, the reforms arrive at a time when Hong Kong’s asset management industry is witnessing renewed momentum.

According to the SFC’s latest Asset and Wealth Management Activities Survey, total AUM (Asets Under Management) rose 20% to a record high in 2025, and net fund inflows nearly tripled during the year (up 193%).

Critically, 56% of assets managed in Hong Kong are now invested beyond the Chinese Mainland and Hong Kong SAR, demonstrating the special administrative region’s enduring role as a genuinely global allocation center.

“The reformed Unified Fund Exemption (UFE) regime—described in the report as the most consequential tax development in a generation—directly resolves the legal certainty gap that had previously driven parts of the alternatives business to other hubs. Under the new framework, qualifying carried interest and performance fees will attract a 0% effective tax rate at both the corporate entity level and in the hands of Hong Kong-based employees. Uniquely, this incentive will apply retrospectively from the 2025 assessment year—a competitive advantage that no rival jurisdiction currently offers,” KPMG stated.

Talking more about the impact of the long-awaited reforms on Hong Kong’s asset management industry, Darren Bowdern, Head of Alternative Investments, Hong Kong SAR, KPMG China, said, “The government’s intent with this landmark tax package is unambiguous: it wants this incentive utilised to its fullest extent. By offering a retrospective 0% effective tax rate on both carry and performance fees, Hong Kong has eliminated the operational ambiguities that historically hindered private equity, credit, and hedge fund structures locally. We anticipate strong immediate interest from global asset managers looking to build permanent investment teams and oversee high-value Asian portfolios from Hong Kong.”

As per Bowden, Hong Kong’s capital markets are also gaining significant momentum. The city regained its position as the world’s leading market for IPO fundraising in 2025 and has maintained this strong performance into 2026, currently ranking among the top two globally, with KPMG forecasting full-year IPO fundraising of around HKD 350 billion.

Vivian Chui, Head of Securities and Asset Management, Hong Kong SAR, KPMG China, remarked, “Markets are showing renewed momentum, capital is returning, and policymakers are taking deliberate steps to strengthen Hong Kong’s position in an increasingly competitive global landscape. From the deepest IPO pipeline in a decade to leadership in tokenization and an expanding ETF product shelf, the foundations for sustained growth are firmly in place. The challenge for the industry now is to invest in the people and skills needed to capture these opportunities.”

The KPMG report has identified exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as a significant growth opportunity for Hong Kong’s asset management industry. The average daily turnover of ETFs for the first six months of 2026 was HKD 39.6 billion, an increase of 17% when compared with the same period in 2025.

KPMG expects the market to expand further as investor demand moves beyond traditional passive index products towards active strategies, income generation, thematic exposure, virtual assets, and tactical trading products.

This changing product mix could strengthen market liquidity, broaden investor choice, and create new distribution opportunities for global and regional asset managers.

Arion Yiu, Audit Partner, Financial Services, Asset Management, Hong Kong SAR, KPMG China, noted, “This next phase of growth must, however, be built on investor trust. As products become more sophisticated, particularly in areas such as leveraged, inverse, and single-stock ETFs, managers and distributors will need to ensure that governance, disclosure, and investor education keep pace. Firms that can combine innovation with strong product oversight will be best placed to capture this opportunity.”

The post Tax reforms will make Hong Kong attractive for asset managers, says KPMG appeared first on International Finance.

Cross-border wealth refers to money that individuals or families hold in a country other than the one they live in. Think of a wealthy Indonesian family keeping investments in Singapore, or a European entrepreneur holding assets in Zurich. These arrangements are entirely legal and extremely common among the rich, and the city that attracts the most of this money earns enormous advantages, such as jobs, fees, taxes, real estate demand, and influence.

In 2025, Hong Kong booked USD 2.95 trillion in such assets, narrowly surpassing Switzerland’s USD 2.94 trillion. Executive Partners Analysis put the moment in perspective in May 2026: “Hong Kong now books $2.95 trillion in cross-border private wealth. Switzerland books $2.94 trillion. The margin is $10 billion on a base of nearly $3 trillion, which is to say the margin is almost nothing. But the direction is everything. This reversal is unlikely to be undone.”

The Rise of the East in a World of Abundance

The backdrop to Hong Kong’s rise is a year of spectacular global wealth growth. Total global financial wealth rose by 10.7% in 2025 to reach USD 333 trillion, the fastest expansion since 2021. If you include physical assets like property and land, total global net wealth approaches $550 trillion. Much of this growth was driven by surging stock markets, which rose 13.2% globally on average. Gold was a particular standout, jumping roughly 44% in the year, as central banks and retail investors alike rushed to buy the commodity amid concerns about the long-term stability of major currencies.

This wealth is not spreading evenly. Globally, cross-border assets grew by 8.4% to USD 15.7 trillion, but nearly 90% of all new offshore money flowed into just 10 booking centres. The result is a world increasingly divided into two gravitational poles: an Eastern Hub, anchored by Hong Kong and Singapore, pulling in wealth from mainland China, India, and Southeast Asia, and a Western Hub, dominated by Switzerland, the United States, and the United Kingdom, serving European, Middle Eastern, and Latin American clients.

Also Read | Hong Kong brings framework for secondary trading of tokenised products

Hong Kong now sits atop both of these poles, and analysts project it will continue growing at around 9% per year through 2030. As BCG’s 2026 Global Wealth Report Stated: “Hong Kong is cementing its role as China’s gateway to global markets, though that same concentration ties its trajectory tightly to economic and regulatory developments on the mainland.”

The China Connection

The single biggest reason for Hong Kong’s ascendancy is its relationship with mainland China. More than 60% of the assets booked in Hong Kong come from mainland Chinese clients. This is the product of a deliberate policy architecture designed to channel mainland wealth through Hong Kong’s internationally trusted financial system.

The centrepiece of this architecture is the Cross-boundary Wealth Management Connect, commonly called the WMC, a scheme that allows residents of the Greater Bay Area, the cluster of cities in southern China that includes Shenzhen and Guangzhou alongside Hong Kong, to invest in financial products on either side of the border. When it was upgraded in early 2024, the scheme raised individual investment quotas and allowed a wider range of products and participants. By April 2025, over 154,000 individual investors from the Greater Bay Area were using it, and they had moved more than RMB 112 billion across the border. The number of eligible investment funds available to mainland investors through the scheme grew from around 160 at the end of 2023 to 358 by March 2025.

The impact on Hong Kong’s banking and investment industry has been dramatic. Between 2022 and 2024, investment transaction volumes at retail banks more than doubled, from HKD 819 billion to HKD 1.774 trillion. In private banking, which serves the very wealthy, volumes grew from HKD 2.975 trillion to HKD 4.466 trillion over the same period. Total assets under management in Hong Kong grew by 13% in 2024 to reach HKD 35 trillion.

Private banks expanded their office space by between 35% and 50% to handle the surge. By mid-2025, a streamlined onboarding process for wealthy clients at seven private banks had already processed transactions exceeding HKD 70 billion, with 13 more banks preparing to join the system.

Inviting the Ultra-Wealthy Home

Managing money is one thing. Getting the people who own it to move there is another. Hong Kong has been pursuing both strategies simultaneously. Paul Chan, the Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, described the underlying logic plainly, “Leveraging the advantages of ‘one country, two systems’, complemented by free, open, transparent, and predictable economic policies as well as a stable and secure investment environment, and cross-market connectivity, Hong Kong is attracting more and more ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices.”

In March 2024, the government launched the New Capital Investment Entrant Scheme, a residency programme that allows wealthy foreigners to obtain the right to live in Hong Kong in exchange for a minimum investment of HKD 30 million, roughly USD 3.85 million. Of that amount, HKD 27 million must go into approved financial assets or real estate, and HKD 3 million must be placed into a government-run strategic investment fund that deploys capital into local technology, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and sustainable industries.

By the end of February 2026, the scheme had received 3,166 applications and was on track to bring in approximately HKD 95 billion in new capital. Of those applicants who have completed their investments and received approval, most put their money into mutual funds and listed equities. The tax incentives driving these decisions are significant. Hong Kong levies no capital gains tax, no inheritance tax, no wealth tax, and no value-added tax. Income tax on locally earned salaries tops out at 17%, which is extremely low by international standards.

These conditions have made Hong Kong a magnet for family offices, which are private companies set up by very wealthy families to manage their investments and financial affairs across generations. By the end of 2025, there were over 3,380 single family offices operating in Hong Kong, a 25% increase in just two years. The government had set a target of facilitating 200 new family offices and hit it ahead of schedule, with a new target of 220 additional offices set for 2026.

The Succession Reckoning

Underlying the family office boom is a generational pressure that rarely makes headlines but is reshaping the entire wealth management industry. Decades of rapid wealth creation across East and Southeast Asia have produced a high concentration of first-generation fortunes. In Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, between 40% and 50% of major family enterprises are still run by their founders, with the median age of leadership above 70. These families are now confronting what happens next.

Michael Kahlich, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group, framed the scale of the challenge in the 2026 Global Wealth Report, “Families are increasingly confronting succession as a design challenge rather than a single transfer event. The firms that can help clients navigate governance, inter-generational alignment, and long-term wealth structures will define the next era of wealth management in Asia.”

The complexity is real. Modern family fortunes span multiple asset classes and multiple jurisdictions. Younger family members are often dispersed globally, pursuing careers outside the founding business, and may have very different views on what to do with inherited wealth. Many prefer venture capital or sustainable investments over running a traditional manufacturing operation. Equal distribution among heirs can fragment ownership and dilute control. The wealth managers and private banks best positioned to win in Hong Kong are no longer simply those offering access to products, but those capable of designing governance frameworks that can hold a family’s financial interests together across borders and generations.

The Stock Market Revival

If the wealth management business is one engine of Hong Kong’s comeback, its stock exchange is the other. In 2025, Hong Kong reclaimed its position as the world’s top initial public offering, or IPO, venue.

An IPO is when a private company sells shares to the public for the first time, raising capital in the process. Hong Kong raised USD 37.4 billion across 119 listings in 2025, a 231% increase on the year before, exceeding the combined total of the previous three years.

The momentum continued into early 2026, with 40 companies completing IPOs in the first quarter alone, raising the equivalent of around USD 13.3 billion, a 489% year-on-year increase and the strongest quarterly performance in five years.

BCG’s Michael Kahlich observed that the physical aggregation of capital and companies is now forcing even European institutions to relocate: “What ultimately matters is client proximity. Two major wealth-management clusters are emerging globally. Singapore and Hong Kong serving Asia, and Switzerland, the UK, and the US serving Western markets. Swiss banks have responded by expanding operations heavily in major Asian hubs.”

The dominant story driving Hong Kong’s IPO revival is China’s artificial intelligence boom. While technology listings in the United States have struggled, with companies going public at high valuations and then performing poorly, Chinese AI and technology companies have found Hong Kong to be a more receptive and practical venue.

More than 85% of Chinese AI-related companies that went public through early 2026 chose Hong Kong. This is partly because of a specialised regulatory framework called Chapter 18C, which allows innovative technology companies in areas like AI, semiconductors, autonomous vehicles, and robotics to list even if they have not yet generated significant revenue. The bet is on future potential rather than current profitability.

Leading Chinese AI companies that listed have seen post-listing share price gains exceeding 400%. More than 500 companies are now waiting to list, most of them mainland Chinese firms specialising in advanced manufacturing and technology.

Not Everything is Booming

For all the financial energy flowing through its banking towers, Hong Kong’s recovery is uneven on the street level.

Tourist numbers are healthy. Visitor arrivals rose 12% in 2025 to nearly 50 million people, with mainland Chinese visitors accounting for roughly three-quarters of the total. But tourist spending is another story. Total international visitor spending in 2025 remained 15% below the level seen in 2018, before the social unrest and pandemic that scarred the city’s reputation. In contrast, regional rivals Singapore and Macao have both exceeded their pre-pandemic spending levels.

Modern mainland tourists tend to be savvy, cost-conscious travellers who use their phones to compare prices and seek out cultural experiences rather than splashing out on designer goods. Hong Kong’s currency, pegged to the US dollar, makes it expensive relative to other regional destinations. Broad retail sales fell by 5.5% in the first five months of 2025, and hotel room rates have softened despite near-full occupancy.

The government has responded with investment, earmarking HKD 1.6 billion for tourism in its 2026-27 budget, and launching promotional campaigns in new markets including India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Luxury goods showed some resilience, with jewellery and watch sales jumping 20% in April 2026, but the broader consumer economy remains two-speed.

The Shadow Over the Success Story

The most difficult question hanging over Hong Kong’s financial renaissance is whether the institutional framework that makes it valuable can survive the political pressures bearing down on it.

Hong Kong’s unique appeal has always rested on a single foundation: ‘one country, two systems’, the arrangement under which it operates a common legal system, free capital flows, and independent courts, even as it is politically a part of China. International investors, wealthy families, and global banks trust Hong Kong precisely because it offers Chinese proximity combined with Western legal protections. That combination is increasingly under strain.

The enactment of Article 23, a sweeping national security law, in March 2024, followed by updated implementing rules in March 2026, has substantially expanded the legal risks of operating in Hong Kong. The law defines state secrets very broadly, potentially covering information about economic conditions, government policy decisions, and technological developments.

For financial firms, this creates practical uncertainty. Routine business activities, such as conducting due diligence on a Chinese company, auditing assets, or analysing markets, could potentially be characterised as illegal intelligence collection if they touch on sensitive topics.

Foreign consulting and investigation firms have already faced enforcement actions on the mainland under similar laws. A Q2 2026 geopolitical risk assessment captured the essential tension: “The question for the rest of the decade is whether the territory can manage what analysts are calling its security paradox. Can Hong Kong continue to present itself as a globally trusted, transparent financial centre while operating under a tightening legal and political environment.”

Political life has also narrowed. The Democratic Party, Hong Kong’s oldest pro-democracy political organisation, dissolved in late 2025 following financial difficulties and warnings from security authorities.

Where Does This Leave Global Wealth?

Switzerland is not finished. Its greatest strategic advantage is diversity. It draws clients from many different continents and continues to attract money from volatile regions like the Middle East whenever geopolitical tensions flare. It is nobody’s sole focus, which makes it resilient. The United Arab Emirates is also advancing rapidly, recording 11.1% growth in cross-border wealth in 2025 to reach USD 721 billion, as it positions itself as a bridge for wealth owners who want to move assets out of traditional Western centres without losing access to global markets.

But for now, the top spot belongs to Hong Kong. Its GDP grew by 5.9% in the first quarter of 2026, the 13th consecutive quarter of expansion and the strongest rate in nearly five years. The financial machinery is functioning at peak capacity. If the territory can preserve its common law framework and operational transparency while continuing to deepen its integration with the Greater Bay Area, its position at the top of global wealth management looks durable. If the two impulses pull too far apart and international capital begins to feel the friction, the current moment could look, in hindsight, like a high-water mark.

The post Hong Kong overtakes Switzerland to become new home of global wealth appeared first on International Finance.

As per Boston Consulting Group, Hong Kong’s latest achievement will go unchallenged, as hubs in Asia are quickly emerging as new investment destinations for the HNWIs (High-Net-Worth Individuals), compared to the legacy European safe havens.

“Wealth from China and an IPO boom in 2025 helped Hong Kong rise to a USD 2.95 trillion offshore behemoth for the world’s rich, narrowly surpassing Switzerland’s USD 2.94 trillion in cross-border wealth. Hong Kong is cementing its role as China’s gateway to global markets, though that same concentration ties its trajectory tightly to economic and regulatory developments on the mainland,” stated BCG’s 2026 Global Wealth ⁠Report.

BCG sees both Hong Kong and Singapore consolidating their positions in the rankings of cross-border booking centres through an annual growth ratio of nearly 9% till 2030, compared to an expected 6% average in Switzerland over the same period.

“Cross-border wealth globally grew 8.4% to USD 15.7 trillion in 2025, driven by strong markets and more demand for geographical diversification, and it flowed overwhelmingly to the world’s top 10 booking centres, further boosting concentration,” ‌BCG ⁠added.

“Despite slower growth rates, Switzerland’s diversification may prove an advantage as it draws clients from all regions, while the Asian hubs largely depend on growth in China. Geopolitical uncertainty reaffirms Switzerland’s role as a core global booking centre, attracting flight-to-safety flows from more volatile regions such as the ⁠Middle East,” the report observed.

The BCG report also coincides with a similar scoop from Reuters that, quoting bankers and financial advisers, talked about wealthy individuals looking to shift assets from the Gulf region to Switzerland in the wake of the ongoing Iran war.

“What ultimately matters is client proximity,” ⁠said Michael Kahlich, who co-authored the BCG report, adding that two hubs are forming globally – Singapore and Hong Kong for Asia, and Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States for the Western ⁠region.

“As being close to clients has become more important, Swiss banks have expanded to other major hubs,” Kahlich added. ” UBS (UBSG.S), opens new tab, is number one in wealth management in both Singapore and Hong Kong,” he said.

Talking about Hong Kong’s economic growth, the GDP ‌expanded 5.9% in Q1 2026, while completing the historic feat of achieving the 13th consecutive growth quarter. The Q1 data was also the strongest quarterly rate in nearly five years. Authorities in the Chinese special administrative region now expect the GDP growth to stay between 2.5% and 3.5% for 2026 after 3.5% growth for 2025.

“Looking ahead, Hong Kong’s economic growth outlook remains ⁠positive, underpinned by strong global demand for artificial intelligence-related electronics, sustained growth in visitor arrivals and robust cross-boundary financial activities. However, tensions in the Middle East pose downside risks,” a government spokesman said.

The Q1 2026 GDP growth was also the fastest since Q2 2021, when the economy grew 7.6%. On a seasonally adjusted quarterly basis, the economy expanded 2.9% in January-March, compared with ‌1.0% ⁠growth in October-December.

“The rapid global development of artificial intelligence (AI) has driven strong demand for related products and electronics across the board, which has, to some extent, mitigated the potential impact of geopolitical tensions on local exports and the economy,” Financial Secretary Paul Chan commented, while analysing the numbers.

“Facing a complex and ever-changing ⁠external environment, Hong Kong’s economy is moving forward by enhancing quality and increasing scale,” Chan said, adding that deepening AI applications across sectors and strengthening talent development are among the priorities for the administrative region’s authorities.

The post Hong Kong surpasses Switzerland, becomes top cross-border wealth hub appeared first on International Finance.

The framework will facilitate secondary trading of SFC-authorised open-ended funds on the regulator-licensed virtual asset trading platforms, apart from broadening retail investors’ access to regulated trading ⁠services.

The latest move comes three years after the introduction of tokenised assets in Hong Kong. In 2025 alone, tokenised assets grew around sevenfold to around HKUSD 10.7 billion (USD 1.36 billion), according to the SFC figures. As of March 2026, 13 tokenised products were offered to the people residing in the Special Administrative Region.

As per the reports, SFC considers it the right time to pilot 24/7 secondary trading to further integrate tokenised products with the Web3 ecosystem, while integrating lessons learnt from the trading of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Requirements like fair pricing, orderly trading, liquidity provision and disclosure have also been factored in the new manual.

The new framework measures will tackle issues like investor protection and trading beyond operational hours of the underlying securities.

“The framework will initially focus on tokenised money market funds, with plans to review operations and consider expanding the product scope in due course,” the SFC said on April 20, adding the move will broaden retail access to regulated trading services.

“This initiative allows a traditional securities ‌product, ⁠once tokenised, to be traded in the evening and on weekends, and supported by the use of regulated stablecoins and tokenised deposits to facilitate round-the-clock liquidity, satisfying ⁠demand of investors reacting to an increasingly fast-moving and uncertain market environment,” said Julia Leung, the SFC’s chief executive officer (CEO).

“The SFC may also consider over-the-counter secondary trading arrangements on a case-by-case basis,” the regulator concluded.

The post Hong Kong brings framework for secondary trading of tokenised products appeared first on International Finance.