Showing posts with label hong kong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hong kong. Show all posts

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Millennium City

Millennium City, a cluster of newer office buildings developed by Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. (16), has attracted the back offices of banks such as Standard Chartered Plc and Bank of East Asia Ltd. to East Kowloon. Manulife Financial Corp. last year moved its Hong Kong headquarters to the district, while PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has also relocated part of its operations there.
“We can really have a Canary Wharf here if the government gets its act together,” said John Davies, a Hong Kong-based executive director at CB Richard Ellis.
After spending 10 years in public discussion and consultation, the government in 2007 came up with an outline for the site’s redevelopment. The current plan includes building more than 33,000 units of public and private housing, 20 million square feet of office, retail and hotel spaces, cruise terminals and a stadium.
The plan for the development of Kai Tak “had evolved several times to meet changing community aspirations” before it was approved, the government’s Civil Engineering and Development Department, which is in charge of the development of Kai Tak, said in an e-mail reply to Bloomberg questions.

Removing Stigma

Central’s surging costs have already prompted defections. In 2007, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG moved their entire operations in the city across the harbor to the International Commerce Centre in West Kowloon, a reclaimed area that’s a five-minute train ride from Central.
Property prices on the Kowloon Peninsula, north of Victoria Harbour, have historically been below those of Hong Kong Island, home to the city’s financial district and its most expensive residential area. Before the completion of ICC, few banks would have considered setting up front offices in Kowloon, said Davies.
The move to West Kowloon “has removed the negative stigma of Kowloon,” he said. “To attract the same caliber of clients to East Kowloon, the infrastructure in that area needs to  be improved.”

Monday, September 5, 2011

Apple is preparing

 to open its first store in Hong Kong this quarter at the International Finance Center Mall amid a surge in China sales.

Sales in the China region, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, were “key” to Apple’s third-quarter results, surging sixfold to $3.8 billion in the period,
The IFC commmercial complex, developed and owned by Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd. (16) and Henderson Land Development Co., includes the 88-story IFC 2 office tower. It’s located in Hong Kong’s Central shopping and business district.
Apple, which didn’t open its first store in China until 2008, now has two stores each in Beijing and Shanghai. Those four stores generate, on average, the company’s highest traffic and highest revenue.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

items in Hong Kong

 are less likely than in China to be counterfeit.

A stream of customers in Tsim Sha Tsui’s Canton Road yesterday carrying bags of Vivienne Westwood, Gucci and Burberry brand products and speaking in Mandarin, showed that a $350 billion decline in the value of stocks in China since mid-April has failed to kill off the tourist trade. Their spending may help to limit what Morgan Stanley and Daiwa Capital Markets say is set to be a second straight quarterly contraction in Hong Kong’s economy.
In July, sales jumped 29 percent to HK$35.2 billion ($4.5 billion), also a record gain excluding January and February figures that are distorted by a Lunar New Year holiday. Sales of jewelry, watches and clocks soared 52 percent from a year earlier. For electronics, the increase was 65 percent.