Competition between Singapore and Hong Kong is heating up

(Mar 16): For decades, Hong Kong and Singapore have engaged in a more or less friendly competition for financial supremacy in Asia. This week, the rivalry got unusually heated.

“We don’t normally as an organisation dignify remarks made by competitors with a response, but I thought today I’d make an exception to that rule,” Ashley Alder, chief executive of Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, said at a public forum in the city on Wednesday.

Alder proceeded to push back against the idea, reportedly raised by a Singapore Exchange (SGX) executive during a marketing trip to Hong Kong last week, that China’s government has “some influence” over the city’s regulator. Alder said Hong Kong has an “arms-length” relationship with policy makers in Beijing and any suggestion that the SFC is “under the influence” is “totally false.”

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