Two Hong Kong Names Look South: HSBC’s ‘Project Sirena’ and a Landmark on Orchard Road
On the same Thursday, two of the most Hong Kong of all corporate names showed how much weight Singapore now carries in their thinking — one in a confidential bank project, the other on a shopfront in Orchard Road.
A bank studies a second home
HSBC has been exploring how to reduce its reliance on China, including Hong Kong, and give its Singapore operations more independence, according to people familiar with the matter. The internal effort carries a code name, “Project Sirena”.
The reasoning is easy to follow. The London-based lender earned about 40 percent of its first-half pretax profit in Hong Kong. That is a strength in good times and a concentration risk when geopolitics turn rough. According to the same people, the first step would be to bring HSBC’s major banking services in Singapore together under a single entity over the next few years. A possible later step would move other regional operations under that Singapore subsidiary, with the ultimate aim of a second Asian base alongside Hong Kong.
The bank’s public line is far more modest. Surendra Rosha, co-chief executive for Asia and the Middle East, confirmed that HSBC will combine its separate Singapore units as part of a simplification drive, but said there were no further plans after that. All of the group’s Asia-Pacific banking entities, he stressed, remain owned and managed by the Hong Kong-headquartered Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, “and there is no plan to make any changes to this”.
Both versions can be true at once. The deliberations are described as fluid, and a bank with HSBC’s exposure to Greater China has every reason not to look as though it is hedging its bets — or to irritate regulators in Hong Kong and Beijing. Investors noticed anyway: the shares fell as much as 0.8 percent in early Hong Kong trading.
A landlord puts its flagship name abroad
A few kilometres from Singapore’s financial district, the shift was more visible. Wheelock Place, the 21-storey office and retail tower that has stood on Orchard Road for more than 30 years, became Landmark Orchard on November 12. It is the first time Hongkong Land has used its Landmark name — the brand at the heart of its Central district portfolio in Hong Kong — outside the city.
The building was bought in July by Hongkong Land’s Singapore Central Private Real Estate Fund for about US$1.1 billion (S$1.4 billion), the fund’s first acquisition since its launch in February. Tenants stay, and the owner says improvements are planned, without details yet.
What links the two stories
Neither move means Hong Kong is being abandoned; HSBC insists on the opposite, and Hongkong Land is spending more than US$1 billion revamping its Central portfolio at home. But both show the same instinct. Capital that once concentrated almost entirely in one Asian hub is spreading its weight, and Singapore — politically stable and already a leading wealth centre — is where much of it is landing.