Find out why more multinational firms are choosing Singapore over Hong Kong

Are mounting tensions in Hong Kong to blame?

A report by JLL revealed that there is a growing shift in market strategy where in multinational firms are choosing to relocate their regional headquarters here, as Hong Kong come under increasing pressure to conform with China’s policies.

JLL notes that in the third quarter, this trend has been evidenced by several big company moves to Singapore, including prominent names such as General Motors, which opened its regional headquarters here in August.

General Motors now occupies the 37th floor of the Ocean Financial Center at 10 Collyer Quay. Its former regional headquarters was located in Shanghai.

AON, an insurance firm, has also recently inked an agreement to occupy 75,000 sq ft of office space in SGX Centre 1.

Here’s more from JLL:

Overall CBD net take-up remained positive and vacancy improved by 40bps q-oq to 6.1%. The Raffles sub-market registered the largest improvement across all sub-markets, with the vacancy rate declining 190 bps to 2.5%.

Demand from financial institutions was mixed as expansion and consolidation activity was observed across the sub-markets.

While European financial institutions continued with their consolidation or decentralization activity, Mizuho, a Japanese bank, announced its decision to ramp up overseas expansion, with Singapore highlighted as a pivotal platform to expand its market share in Asia.

This will see Mizuho relocate to much bigger 100,000 sq ft office premises at Asia Square Tower 2, which will cater to a projected headcount of 900 within the next three to five years.