Wall Street CEOs want zero quarantine for Hong Kong investment summit

SEVERAL of Wall Street’s biggest banks have made quarantine-free travel a precondition for senior executives to attend a Hong Kong conference designed to trumpet the financial hub’s revival after years of Covid restrictions battered its reputation.

Hong Kong’s banking regulator has held informal talks with lenders on how to pull off the 2-day conference in early November and ensure a star cast of international executives, according to people familiar with the discussions. The chief executive officers of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group and UBS Group — all with major operations in the city — are among those that have been informally invited by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the conference organiser, the sources said, asking not to be named discussing private information.

The stakes are high for Hong Kong to pull off a major in-person conference that shows it can keep pace with regional rival Singapore, which has a busy calendar of events after dropping most pandemic-era curbs. Discussions with lenders are being led by Eddie Yue, the head of the HKMA, and Paul Chan, the Chinese territory’s financial secretary, said the sources. The banks’ concerns have been relayed to the health bureau, which makes the final call on Covid policies.

“We are taking forward the initiative announced by the financial secretary in this year’s budget to organises a high-level investment summit,” an HKMA spokesperson said in a statement. “We are in discussion with relevant stakeholders about the appropriate arrangements to facilitate the hosting of the event.”

Some banks have told officials that their top executives from the US and Europe will only attend if they are allowed to skip the city’s current 7-day hotel quarantine, the sources said. The HKMA has asked if other overseas staff will join the delegate as it weighs whether quarantine-free travel can be arranged for a bigger group, another source said.

Among the questions being raised are how to deal with CEOs and other executives who test positive on arrival, and whether participants will be allowed to move about freely beyond the conference venue. If the city agrees to the quarantine waiver, senior executives could be assigned a yellow code, which would bar them from going to bars or restaurants but allow client meetings, one person involved in the discussions said.

Media representatives at all the banks declined to comment. 

While most of the rest of the world has dismantled Covid curbs on travel and gatherings, Hong Kong is sticking close to mainland China’s zero-tolerance approach. Besides quarantine for travellers and those infected, public gatherings of more than 4 people are still banned — though indoor events can be larger — and masks are mandatory. 

The city is moving to cut its 7-day hotel quarantine to 4 days, with the remaining 3 spent at home, local media reports said. Under Chief Executive John Lee, a former police officer who took over as the city’s top leader in July, the city may also roll out a mainland-style colour-code system to oversee people’s movements. 

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Hong Kong has made quarantine exceptions in the past, including for actor Nicole Kidman and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who made a 32-hour visit in late 2021. But an uproar followed among the local population who have been forced to endure almost 3 years of restrictions on travel, movement and business that have battered the economy.  

To be sure, some executives have not been deterred. 

“Absolutely I will be there,” HSBC Holdings chief executive officer Noel Quinn said in an interview on Monday (Aug 1). “It’s great to see Hong Kong starting to open up.” Quinn has made several trips to the former British colony over the past year, most recently to attend an informal meeting with Hong Kong’s retail investors.

Hong Kong is seeing about 4,000 infections a day, down from more than 70,000 a day in March when a fifth wave hit the city. 

November will also mark the return of the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, an iconic sports tournament and notoriously raucous party. The tournament has been planned around a series of Covid rules including players being kept in a closed-loop system similar to what was used during the Beijing Winter Olympics earlier this year, according to the organiser’s submission to the government.

In contrast, Singapore will host the Formula One Grand Prix race this September with minimal restrictions as it repositions itself as a prime business and tourist destination following its pivot towards a strategy of living with Covid-19. The Shangri-La Dialogue in June drew top diplomats and military officials from around the world to the city-state. BLOOMBERG