Will Asian financial centers overtake Wall Street?
Hong Kong is rising fast thanks to the growth of China. It passed New York as the biggest issuer of initial public offerings in 2006.
from the October 10, 2008 edition
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Pat Murphy talks with
Monitor staff writer Peter Ford about the impact the global financial crisis is having in Asia.
Asia's claim to a larger role in the international financial system rests to a large degree on the fact that – led by China – it is now the world's creditor, with the largest reserves of savings seeking an investment home.
But a financial hub needs more than just a large amount of money: among other essential attributes are a reliable legal framework, a skilled workforce, good regulators, a convertible currency, and a sizable real economy behind the financial facade.
Singapore is making a bid for a global role and has carved out a niche for itself in the currency and oil sectors. But the city-state with a population of just 4 million, and small neighbors in South East Asia, is too minuscule to dream of rivaling New York or London.
Tokyo, the capital of the second-largest economy in the world where financial skills are plentiful, has become strangely "invisible" in Mr. Karabell's words. "The IPO market in Japan is dead because there are not many good issues and equity finance in general is also dead here," laments Mikihide Katsumata, head of New Frontier Capital Management in Tokyo.
Hong Kong may have leapt to the forefront of the IPO market, but offers little in the way of bond, foreign exchange, or commodities trading, which are critical to the success of New York and London.
Nearly half of Hong Kong's Hang Seng market capitalization is made up of mainland Chinese companies, reinforcing Hong Kong's regional, rather than global, role.
Some Chinese firms have launched simultaneously in Hong Kong and Shanghai, which has grand ambitions.
"Shanghai will … complete the goal of establishing an international financial center by 2020," the city's mayor, Han Zheng, declared last November.
But it's hard to see how the city will achieve that goal. China's currency, the RMB, is not fully convertible and will not be for at least a decade according to government advisers; market regulators are beholden to their political masters; international capital flows are subject to government control; and the Shanghai stock market is among the most volatile in the world, gaining 82 percent last year and shedding more than 60 percent so far this year.
Though the government has reform plans, "the decisionmakers who set policy for the financial sector have been excessively cautious," complained Wu Xiaoling, vice chairwoman of the Finance and Economy Committee of the National People's Congress, the Chinese parliament, in a recent interview with the business magazine Caijing.
"China's financial services sector lags far behind the relatively sound system in the United States," she added.
"It will take 10 years for the Chinese government to fully relax capital controls," says He Fan, a finance expert at the China Academy of Social Sciences, a government-backed think tank. "It would take several decades to build an international financial center here."
• Simon Montlake in Bangkok, Thailand, contributed to this story.1 | Page 2
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