Should IBM and other international cloud computing enterprises move their Asian businesses away from Hong Kong?
The prolonged US-China trade dispute, coupled with anti-government protests, could trigger an exodus of capital and talent from Hong Kong. Last October, Goldman Sachs estimated that Hong Kong may have lost US$4 billion of capital to Singapore. More recently, the Bank of England claimed that the unrest in Hong Kong has led to as much as US$5 billion of capital outflow from investment funds since April 2019. Given the challenges these outflows create, it is stunning that Hong Kong is actually adding to capital flight with a bizarre policy to undercut one of its real market strengths.