Andrew joined several hundreds of his closest friends at this year’s annual conference.
The Gulf may be at war with supplies of oil, gas, fertilisers, sulphur, helium (I could go on), not to mention inbound food, all under threat; tech bro’s are looking for unprecedented sums of equity to chase unprecedented risk; and world demographics such as declining dependency ratios are piling unprecedented pressure on Pay As You Go state pension schemes.
But hey! The outlook from HK is looking up. As Financial Secretary Paul Chan pointed out, HK’s real GDP grew by 5.9% YoY in Q1 2026, the fastest in nearly five years. And, for the first time, HK has just overtaken Switzerland as the world’s largest cross-border wealth management centre with a cool US$2.95 trillion in offshore assets.
In among this, the allocation to infrastructure remains acknowledged if niche.
Not mentioned but the Mainland builds plenty, of course, with little need for outsiders, both at home and abroad via the Belt & Road Initiative where non – financial ODI in B&R partner countries amounted to a still chunky US$8.8 billion in Q1.
Elsewhere in Asia, infrastructure is thought of as reassuringly long term, inflation – linked and big ticket (Linda would approve) so safe. But there is often a volatile even unknown revenue line; scope for FX mismatch; and new logistical exposure – by all means, build data centres near cheap power and cooling water but do you then need to lay new submarine cables to take the data there (remember Global Crossing, anyone?).
… Cue specialist advice on infrastructure finance in Asia!
