Hong Kong's International Financial Centre: Retrospect and Prospect

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Broadest and Deepest Global Financial Centres
London
New York
Hong Kong
Singapore
Chicago
Zurich
Frankfurt
Toronto
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At the same global level, the study lists Shanghai, Beijing, Dubai, and Geneva as
“relatively deep but still specialized global centres.” At the next level down, “transnational”
centres range from such “broad and deep” cities as Tokyo, Sydney, and Vancouver to the
“relatively specialized” Shenzhen and Taipei. 23
Hong Kong’s third place global ranking has strengthened in recent years and it rates highly
across all financial sectors. Overall, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo are listed in that order in
terms of regional importance. During the past year and in relative terms across the Asian region,
Shanghai is rising strongly, Shenzhen has weakened slightly, while Beijing has strengthened
slightly. Taipei and Seoul are also improving in terms of their own regional rankings. In general,
however, the gap between Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo and all other regional centres
remains quite wide. In reputational rankings internationally, most Asian centres have benefited
from the fact that the region largely escaped the worst effects of the global financial crisis of
2008. Indeed, their recovery from the Asian crisis of a decade earlier has been dramatic.
In this context, when GFC study respondents were asked to list the cities anywhere in the
world that were likely soon to become more significant, they listed Shenzhen, Shanghai,
Singapore, Seoul, Beijing, and Hong Kong—in that order. Similarly, when they were asked
where they expected to open new offices in the near future, they listed in rank order Shenzhen,
Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, and Seoul. Finally, it is worth noting that
respondents did not consider any of these cities to be ‘tax havens,’ a term they reserved for
Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, the Cayman Islands, and other small island centres.
To give a sense of the relative shifts in reputational ratings over the past two years, the
following table lists the raw GFC survey scores:
23 Ibid, p. 8.
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