Shuli Ren

Hong Kong’s competitiveness as a financial center is about to be tested. The low-tax haven has two opposing forces that promise to transform its $5.4 trillion asset management industry, which overtook Switzerland as the world’s largest cross-border wealth hub last year.

China is getting serious about its global tax hunt, asking citizens to retroactively cough up billions of dollars of unpaid bills on their overseas investments gains. This aggressive stance has sent shockwaves through major wealth management hubs from Zurich to New York.

South Korea, home to the world’s two-largest memory chipmakers, is in the midst of an AI-fueled exports boom. Generating wealth and keeping it at home isn’t the same thing, however.

Frustrated stock investors in China are finding dark humor from a crude, low-budget film that has become a box office hit.

The existential question now is whether Hong Kong’s finance industry can diversify internationally fast enough, especially in terms of funding sources.

Niu Lai, which translates as Here Comes the Bull, is an ironic name in a nation that is perpetually waiting for one, says Shuli Ren for Bloomberg Opinion.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s HK$80 billion ($10.2 billion) share sale is Hong Kong’s biggest follow-on offering on record. But it’s being met with skepticism.

Smart money moves on so fast. The semiconductor stocks that ripped through the roof in the first half of the year are struggling to reclaim momentum. But as a revolutionary technology, the productivity gains from artificial intelligence will be reflected in some asset prices, somehow.

Just when Bitcoin seemed to be breaking out of its long winter, a publicity stunt by one of the crypto industry’s most prominent billionaires is raising questions as to whether this asset class should be in mainstream investors’ portfolios.

The Trump family’s earliest and biggest crypto backer, is suing a Chinese actress and her parents to recover what he describes as a bride price of $6.2 million.