Talent fight intensifies in Hong Kong’s US$1 trillion wealth hub

[NEW YORK] The competition among global banks for Hong Kong’s US$1 trillion of private wealth is intensifying.

Wall Street titans and regional heavyweights such as UBS, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, DBS and China Construction Bank are aggressively expanding their headcount this year, with plans to hire hundreds of private bankers to cater to high-net-worth individuals. Candidates are getting pay bumps of as much as 25 per cent, according to a recruitment firm.

Hong Kong’s wealth sector saw a definitive end to its pandemic-era exodus in 2025, fuelled by robust inflows. As the city prepares to host a major wealth summit this week, officials are positioning the territory as a haven amid shifting global tides and growing risk in the Middle East.

“It’s extremely competitive,” said Lemuel Lee, head of Hong Kong wealth management at BNP Paribas, which is aiming for a 10 to 20 per cent net increase in Greater China relationship managers this year. “Nearly every bank is hiring.”

The city is re-emerging as a primary destination for shifting capital, amid geopolitical volatility in the Middle East and regulatory tightening in Singapore. As investors seek stability away from hubs such as Dubai and navigate the fallout from Singapore’s high-profile money laundering scandals, Hong Kong is asserting itself as the premier alternative for the region’s ultra-wealthy.

A resurgent pipeline for initial public offerings (IPOs) has also minted a new class of millionaires, while a spike in trading activity among high-net-worth clients has bolstered bank revenue.

UBS, Asia’s largest private bank, is looking to capture this momentum by hiring roughly 50 private bankers in Hong Kong this year. The expansion follows a banner 2025, where the firm saw record revenue and net new money for its North Asia business. Greater China remains central to the bank’s regional strategy, making up 70 per cent of Asia Pacific’s transaction revenue last year.

The city’s capital markets are showing signs of a robust recovery, which serves as a critical engine for wealth creation. Amy Lo, chair of Asia wealth management at UBS, said that the Hong Kong IPO market is poised for a “bullish” run.

“This will drive new money flows,” Lo said, pointing to a pipeline of more than 300 companies that have filed to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that roughly half of those firms will go public in 2026, potentially raising as much as HK$350 billion (S$57 billion).

Still, those forecasts may now be at risk with regulators seeking to tighten oversight of the IPO market amid complaints over shoddy applications and a lack of staffing to handle the deluge.

UBS is broadening its scope beyond its traditional focus on the billionaire class, with new hires to primarily target the high-net-worth segment, or individuals with investable assets ranging from US$5 million to US$50 million.

To service this growing influx of mainland-linked capital, Lo emphasised that Mandarin proficiency is “definitely an advantage” for the bank’s newest recruits.

The hiring landscape is shifting into a fight for talent as regional and mainland Chinese banks aggressively expand.

DBS is further increasing its headcount after boosting its private banker ranks by 45 per cent over the past two years, a move Carol Wu, head of private banking for North Asia, described as a strategy to capitalise on wealth flows from mainland China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Taipei-based KGI Securities plans to add up to 30 client advisers with a focus on Greater China as well as flows from Japan, South-east Asia, and the Middle East, according to James Wey, the firm’s head of international wealth management.

China Construction Bank (Asia) aims to hire 100 wealth management professionals till 2027.

This hiring spree has created a significant supply-demand imbalance, with recruitment experts at Elpis Search expecting demand for experienced relationship managers to outstrip supply by at least 20 per cent this year. Candidates are commanding compensation bumps of up to 25 per cent, as banks remain cautious on overall costs with internal departments increasingly pushing back against exorbitant salary demands.

“This year’s fight for top talent will be the most intense we have seen in years,” said Brian Cheng, co-founder of Elpis Search, a Hong Kong-based recruitment firm.

Ultimately, the industry’s trajectory remains inextricably linked to the fortunes of onshore China. While Hong Kong’s billionaire wealth edged up slightly last year, mainland billionaire wealth surged 22 per cent to US$1.8 trillion, according to a UBS report.

This growth is being fuelled by a resurgence in the Chinese technology sector, particularly following the artificial intelligence breakthroughs by DeepSeek. Wall Street firms such as Citigroup are moving quickly to court these tech founders.

“It is generating substantial new wealth,” said Andy Sieg, wealth head for Citigroup, in November, adding that the sector is attracting “a lot of focus”.

The Wall Street bank is looking to add more headcount after increasing its client-facing team in Hong Kong by “double-digits” in percentage terms in 2025, he said.

A recent report by the Private Wealth Management Association projects that assets under management from mainland China will rise to 63 per cent of the city’s total offshore wealth within five years, up from 57 per cent in 2025.

This structural shift is forcing a recalibration of how banks recruit, where they physically locate, and how they define their regional expertise.

At BNP Paribas, the focus has shifted towards recruiting native Mandarin speakers who possess not only linguistic fluency but also a deep understanding of local dialects and business customs, said BNP’s Lee.  

This transition is evident in the bank’s recent headcount data: roughly 80 per cent of newly joined relationship managers in its Greater China team now hail from the mainland, with the remainder from Hong Kong or Taiwan. Just four years ago, mainland recruits accounted for only half of new hires.

Physical infrastructure is also being redesigned to bridge the gap between the two markets. UBS is set to move into a new Hong Kong headquarters in West Kowloon this year, a location strategically chosen for its proximity to the high-speed rail link. UBS’ Lo said that the move is primarily a play on the Greater Bay Area story, highlighting that the commute from the new office to Shenzhen takes only 14 minutes.

As the industry doubles down on Greater China, Hong Kong is simultaneously seeing a decline in its traditional role as a multi-market regional hub.

Sid Sibal, managing director at Aster Recruiting, said that the percentage of relationship managers focused on non-Greater China markets has dropped dramatically.

Bankers managing flows from the Philippines, Thailand, or non-resident Indian clients are increasingly migrating to Singapore, he said. BLOOMBERG