Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
get a job. If they need a job they can easily get one in Toronto. However, most
of them just want to go to a place with nice weather and a nice environment
with a good education system' (
World Journal
1996).
Institutional adjustment to this frothy supply of capital was rapid. Mitchell
(2004) provides an excellent account of financial instruments and funds
assembled by the banks to facilitate capital transfers. North American banks
opened or expanded Hong Kong offices soon after the establishment of the
business investor stream in 1986. The Bank of Montreal in Hong Kong
offered a suite of services, including opening Canadian accounts, advancing
loans for Canadian real estate acquisition, as well as brokerage and emigra-
tion services (Mitchell 2004: 63). Through its American subsidiary, Harris
Trust and Savings Bank, it offered US trusts that avoided Canadian taxes
for a period of five years following emigration. The bank's international
network also permitted capital deposits in its Singapore branch where they
would be preserved from Canadian taxes and possible seizure in Hong
Kong following 1997. Wealthy families were diversifying their investments
in varied international portfolios. This dispersal of assets was most visible in
the case of the largest families like the Li's who not only entered the
Vancouver and Toronto property markets but also acquired a 95 percent
share in Husky Oil and 10 percent in the Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce.
11
Smaller fortunes also sought varied safe havens. A survey
of 3600 ethnic Chinese business immigrants in Canada declared that over
40 per cent of their off-shore capital at the time of landing was not located
in their country of origin (Wong and Ho 2006).
12
One of the more influential conduits of investment funds has been the
Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Established by a Scot,
Thomas Sutherland, in 1865, the bank left its headquarters in Hong Kong
in 1991 during the run up to 1997, re-branded itself as HSBC, and returned
to its British roots with a London head office. As part of its own global
diversification, the bank entered British Columbia in 1981 and expanded
with the takeover of the troubled Bank of British Columbia in 1986, thereby
gaining a retail presence through acquiring BBC's 41 existing branches.
With an active programme of further acquisitions, by 2007 HSBC was the
seventh largest bank in Canada with its head office in Vancouver and a retail
presence in every province except Prince Edward Island. Its deep Hong
Kong networks leave it perfectly positioned to serve the expanding trans-
Pacific market and the Bank has facilitated trade missions to East and
Southeast Asia. The colourful Vice-President of its Canadian operations in
the early 1990s, David Bond, was widely cited for advice he offered immi-
gration authorities concerning the desirability of Hong Kong's wealthy fam-
ilies: 'If I was the czar of immigration, I'd send a fleet of Boeing 747s to
Hong Kong to pick them up. This is a unique chance to engage in a transfer
of human and financial capital that is unprecedented anywhere in the world'
