In mid-November, the chief executive of a prominent Hong Kong hedge fund rented an office across the border in Shenzhen. Two of his mainland Chinese staff had suffered abuse on their commute and felt unsafe. The new premises were a “panic room”.
A day later, when three of his local staff were tear-gassed on their way out of a client meeting, the fund looked into registering an office in Singapore.
“There’s a whole ideology for a lot of people of pretending that it’s business as usual for Hong Kong and the fi