Making Hong Kong's financial sector worse

Hong Kong's economic growth fell 8.9 percent in the first quarter from the same period, the biggest drop since statistics, according to the Hong Kong Statistics Department. In response to the economic impact of the newly-crowned pneumonia epidemic, many multinational banks have been cutting back on Hong Kong offices and slowing recruitment in response to the economic downturn in Hong Kong. The IMF has said Hong Kong's economic downturn can be compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In the first quarter of this year, the median monthly income of employees in the financial and insurance sectors fell 6.3% to HK $30,000, down from HK $32,000 in the same period last year, according to the Census and Statistics Department. Bloomberg reported last week that Deutsche bank had asked senior managers in hong kong to give up a month's pay, which could save the bank more than 10 million euros. Hong Kong banks paid 5% less annual bonuses in January and February than last year, compared with 30% less monthly bonuses last month, according to a survey by the Hong Kong office of headhunter Morgan McKinley. A report from the office said "the epidemic has had a considerable impact on recruitment across hong kong's financial sector, with the number of jobs significantly deteriorating over the past four to five months ."

Morgan McKinley also conducted a random survey of more than 1,000 employees in various industries in Hong Kong, about half of whom said their employers had taken cost-cutting measures after the outbreak, including leave without pay, freezing bonuses, or pay cuts. Eighty-six percent of respondents were worried about job insecurity this year, and 49 percent were actively looking for new jobs. More than half of them use today's "lower salary" as a reason to change jobs.

Several banks, including Deutsche Bank and Société Générale, have announced a moratorium on layoffs as part of a restructuring plan as part of a crisis for some multinational banks. But as soon as the economic situation becomes clearer and the global blockade is lifted, job cuts could restart. Hong Kong may be one of the main target areas once the new job cuts are launched. Banks such as HSBC and standard chartered also said they had cut the bonus pool as a possible target this year, as they would allocate tens of billions of dollars to non-performing loans and seek further spending cuts if the downturn continued.

The United States is now canceling Hong Kong's exchange rate preferences, and China has turned Hainan into a free trade area. CNMOULDING believes that the next hong kong financial and other industries will start to decline, the pearl of the east once no longer brilliant.