w*****a
发帖数: 505 | 1 在香港工作能不能让老板发人民币工资？
Wealthy Chinese feast on HK luxury goods
By Rahul Jacob in Hong Kong
Published: January 3 2011 17:46 | Last updated: January 3 2011 17:46
Yachts in Hong Kong
As a dealer in Hong Kong for Lamborghini and an array of luxury yacht
manufacturers, Leo Wong is in the right place at the right time. In 2010 an
influx of wealthy buyers from mainland China pushed up sales in Hong Kong,
where conspicuous consumption has long been a spectator sport, of everything
from luxury cars and expensive apartments to fine art and fine wine.
Mr Wong’s twin dealerships in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese city of
Guangzhou last year sold 65 Lamborghinis priced between HK$3m (US$385,000)
and HK$12m. This year will be even better, he predicts.
The impact on the fine wine market in the city has been even more dramatic.
Sotheby’s Hong Kong wine sales totalled US$52.5m last year, up from US$14.
3m in 2009 and accounting for 59 per cent of the wine sold by the auction
house worldwide, surpassing its sales in New York and London put together.
Andrew Lloyd Webber, the British composer and theatre director, will be
selling part of his collection of Bordeaux and Burgundy wines, valued at
between US$2.8m and US$4.1m through the auction house in Hong Kong on
January 22.
The flood of money from across the border is creating problems for Hong Kong
, where the economy grew 6.8 per cent in the third quarter.
Donna Kwok, an economist with HSBC, predicts that asset prices will continue
to be “doused in gasoline”.
A third of buyers of luxury flats in the city in 2010 were wealthy mainland
Chinese, many of whom left their flats unoccupied, contributing to a rental
spiral at the top of the market.
The Hong Kong government faces a quandary: property prices have risen about
50 per cent across the board since the end of 2008, pricing middle-class
first-time buyers out of the market. The government began taking steps in
October to cool the market, announcing that property purchases would no
longer be taken into account in determining eligibility for permanent
residency.
The following month the government dramatically raised the stamp duty on
short-term sales of properties held for less than 12 months.
Academics in Hong Kong and mainland China say they are surprised by the
volume of money crossing the border into Hong Kong, given that the mainland
has capital controls. “There are huge amounts of money flowing into Hong
Kong from China but it’s not legal,” says Chen Guanghan, a professor of
economics at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou.
Individuals in China are not allowed to transfer more than US$50,000
annually out of the country, which suggests that mainland buyers of
expensive apartments in Hong Kong are using offshore accounts to finance
their purchases and alternative routes such as channelling money through
units of mainland companies with operations in Hong Kong.
It is not just big-spenders: there have been reports of a tour bus of
mainland Chinese tourists parking by a major bank in downtown Hong Kong
while the travellers deposited their money there.
A senior private banker likens the transferring of money from the mainland
to Hong Kong to the hawala trade in Dubai, where money bypasses the
conventional banking system using trusted intermediaries.
Hong Kong’s underground financial market is bigger today than that of Dubai
’s, says Thomas Chan, head of the China Business Centre at Hong Kong
Polytechnic University.
“It is capital flight but it can go back in again,” says Professor Chan.
“Mainland Chinese are using [Hong Kong’s capitalist system] for investment
and diversification. Hong Kong is a Casablanca: all kinds of people from
different countries are dealing with each other informally here.”
The city’s residents have increased their holding of renminbi deposits more
than 200 per cent in the past year from a low base but their mainland
cousins’ appetite for assets in Hong Kong’s free economy continues
unabated. An art industry insider estimates that a good portion of high-
priced art and ceramics bought in the city by mainland Chinese –
contributing to record sales for auction houses in 2010 – sits in empty
flats. | T*******t
发帖数: 9274 | 2 There are many places in HK to transfer your HKD in HK to RMB
in mainland China. I guess that could be the reason. | T*******t
发帖数: 9274 | 3 this is money laundry...
【在 T*******t 的大作中提到】
: There are many places in HK to transfer your HKD in HK to RMB
: in mainland China. I guess that could be the reason.
| w*****a
发帖数: 505 | 4 you like to talk to yourslef?
【在 T*******t 的大作中提到】
: this is money laundry...
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