For many people in Hong Kong, it is hard to imagine the city with its home airline controlled by any group other than Swire Pacific.
Alongside Jardine Matheson, Swire is one of two British colonial trading houses that still loom large over the former UK colony. It has run Cathay Pacific Airways for more than 70 years. Under Swire’s stewardship, Cathay grew into one of Hong Kong’s most recognised global brands as the then British colony transformed itself from a sleepy Chinese entrepôt into a dynamic international business and financial hub.
But then Hong Kong is rapidly changing in lots of ways that were previously inconceivable, especially as a tough new Chinese national security law adopted in July chips away at the territory’s previously robust civil freedoms. Cathay becoming, say, just another subsidiary of its second-largest shareholder, Beijing flag carrier Air China, would be entirely consistent with the current zeitgeist in Hong Kong.