Dubai’s loss could be Hong Kong’s gain, but only if city is ready

When InvestHK’s director general Alpha Lau Hai-suen recently said that companies using Dubai as a hub had mostly shifted to Hong Kong after the outbreak of the Iran war, the instinct to leverage the city’s position as a safe haven for investment was understandable.

Hong Kong should absolutely try to capture capital and talent unsettled by instability in the Gulf. However, it should resist the temptation to confuse a geopolitical opening with a strategic victory. Opportunity does not become a durable financial gain because an official says the right thing at the right time; it becomes durable only when a jurisdiction is operationally ready to absorb it.

The scale of the opportunity is real. Estimates by Boston Consulting Group put foreign assets registered in the United Arab Emirates at about US$700 billion in 2024, while roughly a quarter of over 2,270 firms established there belonged to Asian owners. That is a meaningful pool of capital and corporate activity, but money does not relocate because of headlines. It moves when family office principals, private bankers and wealth managers decide, one account and one structure at a time, that another jurisdiction is easier, safer and more useful.