In Hong Kong, a city that lives for business, 2016 is shaping up as a year to forget.
In the first quarter, the city’s gross domestic product shrank by the most since 2011. In February, property sales hit a 25-year low. That same month, HSBC voted to stay in London instead of relocating its headquarters to the former British colony. In March, Hong Kong fell behind Singapore in Z/Yen Group’s semiannual ranking of financial centers. Then in April, Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties, one of the world’s biggest real estate developers, told the 125-year-old Hong Kong stock exchange to suspend trading in its shares. The company plans to relist elsewhere, according to a document sent to prospective backers—and that somewhere else poses an existential crisis for capitalism’s Asian citadel…
