Would starting IB in Hong Kong be perfect for Canadians?
If you're not longer a Canadian resident, you don't have to pay Canadian taxes while living in Hong Kong right? Given that HK salaries are comparable to NYC, would Hong Kong be a better starting point? I know that rent may be considerably higher, but if you only end up paying HK be a good choice for Canadians given the lower taxes?
Don’t be short-sighted.
Yes not paying taxes are great but ultimately HK is not a place you want to be in if you don’t speak an asian language and/or chinese/east asian. Yes there are quite a few expats still but as the years go by and CCP take over Hk more you’ll see less and less expats (don’t want to get political).
Also PE firms even if you come from top BBs don’t hire from HK (at least NA offices) they’ll hire directly from your NYC/SF/LA/Toronto counterparts. Of course if you want to work for them in HK thats possible but then once again if you want any level of success you need to speak an asian language + look the part
Can you elaborate on hiring from Toronto offices? I thought exit opps were fairly difficult to obtain if you're applying from a regional office in Canada as opposed to NYC/SF BBs/EBs. Are exits from HK into NA PE really that bad?
From Toronto you’ll be working at the toronto office for PE not nyc/la/sf.
Never seen anyone from HK during my PE interviews (MF/UMM) and my firm that I will be joining shortly has 0 that worked in Asia IB (UMM)
Is there any way to get to the US from Toronto? Is it easy to go from BB in Toronto to BB in USA (for example GS Toronto -> GS NYC)
The first comment pretty much summarizes what I would say as well. You shouldn’t be making any early career decisions based on your tax situation. I would focus on where you think you would get the best learning experience as an analyst and where you potentially see yourself after banking.
What about for career banking? For career bankers, from a pure financial perspective (assuming they find all other aspects equal - lifestyle, etc) wouldn't it make sense for those who have the chance to move to HK earn more? Just wasn't sure why HK isn't targeted as much for most career bankers. It's just that as pay scales up in the higher levels, the taxed income seems to scale significantly as well. Isn't there a significant difference between $1MM taxed at 13-15% compared to 50%+?
I guess I should rephrase my last line as "where you see your career going", wasn't trying to limit the range of possibilities to only exit opportunities.
I'm not sure HK isn't "targeted as much". It's just that, like other comments have mentioned, the HK banking market requires a different set of skills/traits, i.e. significant connections, fluency in Mandarin, cultural familiarity, etc. People who have those things are definitely saturating the group targeting career banking in HK. And similarly, while it would be nice to only think about things from a pure financial perspective, you can't realistically separate the other aspects of life from career decisions.
Given that WSO is fairly American-focused (and maybe European-focused to a lesser extent), I would say it isn't a good reference if you're trying to gauge the interest in HK banking. Banking in HK is a huge industry by all measures and there are hundreds of thousands of students that are gunning for those roles. Two very large groups that come to mind are local Chinese students at top universities in the Mainland and Chinese students at top European universities (Oxbridge, LSE) looking to come back to Asia after university.
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