Singapore still multi-national firms’ top pick for regional headquarters: report

It dominated Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Singapore remains the hottest spot for multi-national companies (MNCs) to set up their regional headquarters (RHQs), though competition is expected to intensify, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.

The commercial real estate company found that among the six cities studied—Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo and Beijing—Singapore and Hong Kong are first and second in rankings respectively. Both are well established RHQ locations, and have longstanding economic and regulatory environments designed to lure in companies.

However, Singapore leaves Hong Kong in the dust in several aspects—Hong Kong has a higher cost of living, as well as increasing competition from Tier 1 Chinese cities. Further, on a square metre basis, Hong Kong is almost twice as expensive as Shanghai and Singapore. Hong Kong also has the worst space efficiency compared to Singapore and Shanghai (which ranked third among the six).

In contrast, Singapore is the most space efficient market of the top three. And as a result of rental decline in 2015, it is cheapest on both a per square metre and per workstation basis.