Hong Kong Expat Banker, Endangered Species

I remember when most Lan Kwai Fong bar hoppers were Westerners. No more.

A brace of articles came out recently reflecting the changes wrought on employment in Hong Kong's financial services industry. Once upon a time, it was fairly common to come across Westerners plying their trade in the Far East. In particular, the self-deprecating acronym FILTH was used by British expatriates meaning Failed in London, Try Hongkong. The underlying assumption here, of course, was that it was easier to find a job in the less competitive environs of Hong Kong than in the City of London.

With the world's economic center of gravity shifting towards Asia, the inferiority complex of bankers working in Asia is increasingly becoming less warranted. There is more business to be drummed up in Asia today than in, say, post-Brexit UK. So while Hong Kong remains a financial gateway to still-burgeoning mainland China and beyond, London is primed to become a gateway to...nowhere in particular:

For years, the territory’s Chinese, and even its China-savvy expatriates, derisively called indulged Brits FILTH, which stands for Failed In London, Try Hong Kong. Expats who might have never worked in the City, Europe’s financial hub, could walk into good jobs and cut deals in the soft-carpeted confines of the Hong Kong Club or over a pint at the Captain’s Bar in the Mandarin Oriental.

Now FILTH is in terminal decline, its fate seemingly sealed by cost-cutting throughout the financial industry. John Mullally, an executive recruiter, said that as recently as 2010, expatriates from Britain and the rest of Europe, plus those from the U.S. and Australia, landed 40 percent of his finance job placements. Today, that figure is 15 percent. “On a weekly basis I get quite a few senior bankers that 15 years ago would have picked up a job straightaway, but today they’re really struggling,” said Mullally, who runs Robert Walters Plc’s banking practice in Hong Kong.

Moreover, why should banks and insurers pay extra to hire Westerners--relocation costs, housing costs, living costs, and the rest of it--when they are increasingly unsuited to the China-influenced business climate? Having neither the ability to speak Mandarin nor the connections (guanxi) to Asian business networks, what justifies the added expense? You might as well hire the folks from around Asia and groom them for the future:

At Citigroup Inc., Chinese students will account for the majority of university graduates the firm intends to hire full time in Hong Kong next year, according to James Mendes, the U.S. bank’s Asia-Pacific head of recruitment. For the past two years, JPMorgan Chase has hired more than 40 percent of its full-time graduates and interns for Hong Kong from local universities, a number the bank expects to increase as it ramps up business in the region.

Private banks are also looking for China-skilled staff to help them capture a slice of the country’s burgeoning wealth. Bank of Singapore Ltd., a unit of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., for example, hired 20 Mandarin-speaking relationship managers in Hong Kong this year.

Scarce, too, for expats are perks like generous housing allowances and memberships to such elite clubs as the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, which, unlike most Hong Kong institutions, has retained its “royal” association -- or, for Americans, the American Club. The value of a typical expatriate middle-manager package in Hong Kong fell to a five-year low in 2016, according to a recent survey by consultancy firm ECA International. Still, that’s $265,500.

The new breed is the Western-educated Asian banker with his or her feet in both worlds:

“Young junior bankers without language skills are so rare these days,” said Quinlan, 33, who now runs his own financial consulting firm.

Most global banks have tried to bring in Chinese power brokers. Many of these bankers are not only bilingual but also bicultural -- products of elite Western universities who can move seamlessly between China and the global Wall Street. Many also bring deep connections to China’s leadership and state-owned enterprises. Now mostly in their 40s and 50s, they include Morgan Stanley’s Wei Sun Christianson and Credit Suisse Group AG’s Janice Hu.

Reuters chimes in that the ongoing changes reflect that more and more of the share of business--initial public offerings and the like--coming from the mainland. So, hiring more bankers from the mainland is also a predictable trend:

A flood of Chinese bankers is changing the social fabric of Hong Kong, as they rapidly expand their footprint in one of the world's premier financial centers, even as Beijing struggles to tame the former British colony politically. Twenty years after Hong Kong's handover to Chinese rule, scores of mainland professionals are filling the elite financial ranks of Hong Kong, while a series of lay-offs at Western banks has led to an exodus of expatriates.

The largest increase in mainland staff over the past decade has come in investment banks, with 80 percent seeing an increase of at least 20 percent, according to a 2015 Financial Services Development Council survey. It has a much better environment than Beijing where I used to work," said Hong Hao, a managing director at BOCOM International, who has lived in Hong Kong for five years. "The food is good, and the tax rate is also good." Tax rates in Hong Kong are around 15-17 percent, while they can be as much as 45 percent in mainland China.

Chinese initial public offerings (IPO) dominate the Hong Kong market, the world's largest IPO market in 2016 when mainland offerings represented 80 percent of all new listings, according to Thomson Reuters data. Hong Kong's financial services industry accounts for 18 percent of the territory's economy, compared with just 10.4 percent in 1997 when the city returned to Chinese rule.

If Asia butters Hong Kong's bread more and more these days, then the days of FILTH becoming ever more numbered is to be expected.