Foreign Finance Companies Exit Hong Kong; Chinese Firms Have Increased Overtaking US Companies

Hong Kong Central on July 15, 2015. (Bill Cox/The Epoch Times)

Hong Kong’s Census and Statistics Department and InvestHK published a joint survey on Nov. 24, 2022, named “2022 Annual Survey of Companies in Hong Kong with Parent Companies Located outside Hong Kong.”

The results show that the number of business operations in Hong Kong with parent companies outside Hong Kong fell to 8,978 in 2022. It is the first time the number has dropped below 9,000 since 2019.

The total comprises 1,411 regional headquarters, 2,397 regional offices, and 5,170 local offices. The number of regional headquarters has reduced by 130 since 2019.

Number of Enterprises by Country

The number of businesses from Japan, America, and England remaining in Hong Kong has slumped over the past few years.

A total of 1,388 Japanese corporations are still active in Hong Kong in 2022, a reduction of 25 since 2019. American firms are down from 1,351 in 2018 to 1,258 in 2022. A noticeable drop was also been observed in the UK businesses, from 713 in 2019 to 655 in 2022.

Since 2019, 58 UK parent companies have abandoned the Hong Kong market.

However, parent companies from mainland China and Singapore have been increasing steadily year by year.

As of Jun 1, there were 2,114 companies from the mainland in Hong Kong. The number has skyrocketed by 67 percent since 2017. The number of Singaporean firms has also increased from 408 firms in 2017 to 463 in 2022, an increase of 55.

Ranking by the number of companies: China 2,114 (1), Japan 1,388 (2), America 1,258 (3), UK 655 (4), and Singapore 463 (5).

Types of Business

In terms of types of business, import and export trading, wholesale and retail sectors dominate at 4,170 companies, but the number has dropped by 124 since 2021.

The finance and banking sector is second with 1,683 companies, but 123 corporations have moved out of Hong Kong since 2018.

In third place are overseas professional, business, and education services companies, with a total of 1,308 enterprises stationed in Hong Kong—this compares to 1,392 enterprises in 2020; the number has shrunk by 84.

Number of Employees

In 2022, the number of employees hired by Hong Kong-based companies with parent companies overseas is close to 468,000. There is a notable decline of 25,000 people from 493,000 staff members in 2019.