The chief executive of SBI Holdings, the financial conglomerate that owns Japan’s biggest online brokerage, said he plans to pull his company’s operations out of Hong Kong because “without freedom, there is no financial business”.
The decision by Yoshitaka Kitao will make SBI the largest Japanese financial institution to opt for a full withdrawal from Hong Kong and comes as the group is also reviewing London’s status as the optimal financial centre in Europe.
The introduction last year of Hong Kong’s controversial National Security Law, under which 47 activists were arrested earlier this month, had created increasing fear in Japanese boardrooms, said Kitao. In particular, he said, it was “not a good place for financial institutions”, adding that increasing numbers of Japanese companies were reconsidering the scale of their operations in the former British colony.