Will Hong Kong's financial talent come to Tokyo?
Hello. I'm Mike, a lawyer living in Hong Kong.
So, to conclude, the basic premise that financial talent will flow from Hong Kong to other financial cities is wrong, and nothing will happen if we just wait and add our fingers. The other thing to note is that Tokyo may be a financial city (although that is questionable these days), but it is not a financial hub as it stands. I say "if it continues like this" because I believe that Japan can still become "Japan as number one" again if it tries hard enough.
But what do I do?
To do so, we need to:
1) accurately recognize that the "financial city" that Tokyo should aim to become is different in nature and role from that of 30 years ago when Tokyo was the number one financial city
2) abandon the naive idea of using the recent events in Hong Kong to attract human resources, and instead, develop the fundamentals for Tokyo to become a financial city that can compete with Hong Kong 3) develop the necessary infrastructure for Tokyo to become the number one financial city in the world (2) Then, we should abandon the idea of using the recent events in Hong Kong to attract human resources, and instead focus on the fundamentals that will enable Tokyo to become a financial city that can compete with Hong Kong
When you are in Hong Kong and you are actually involved in the fund business and you look at Japan, you can clearly see the differences in the legal system and the position of the financial industry. When you actually work in Hong Kong, you realise how inconvenient and narrow-minded Japan is.
Of the two points made above, the first was made in our previous article, "Tokyo as a Financial Hub for Asia (2)". 30 years ago, the Japan-as-Number-One era was a dream come true, when Japan's export-led economic policies enabled it to enter the global economy and achieve brilliant economic growth from the 1960s. Japan's banks also benefited from this economic growth to become number one in the world (see above right). "(See above right, extract from Weekly Diamond, 25 August 2018, https://diamond.jp/articles/-/177641?page=2). However, since the 1990s, Japanese industry has been losing its position to Asian countries such as China, which modeled themselves on Japan's rapid economic growth, and has been forced to move to a domestic demand-led model, deriding itself as Galapagos. At a time when GAFA is sweeping the world, the Japanese government continues to place the highest priority on managing the assets of the Japanese people (the personal assets of the elderly?). In this age of GAFA, the most important thing is to manage Japanese assets (personal assets of the elderly?) and to make Tokyo a global financial city. If Tokyo really wants to be the world's financial capital, it should leave behind the glory of 30 years ago and become a city with a platform to invest the world's money in the world's assets.
Next is (ii). Here's the main question. What do we need to do to achieve this? To be continued in the next article.
