Qatar, Hong Kong seek to bolster investment ties

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Doha, Qatar: Qatar and Hong Kong are seeking to enhance investment opportunities. Hong Kong enjoys an ideal location in Asia that enables businesses to tap into the multitude of opportunities.

Speaking to The Peninsula in an exclusive interview, King Leung, Global Head of Financial Services and Fintech, InvestHK highlighted the collaboration between Qatar and Hong Kong and how they can benefit from each other.

Leung said, “Our working relationship started from some initial discussions with the sovereign wealth fund - the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA). The QIA professionals understand the landscape in terms of the attractive investment opportunities in Hong Kong, as well as in mainland China.”

Hong Kong being the international finance center serving the region and China as well, “we see that over past 18 months, there is enormous interest and movements of mainland firms using Hong Kong as the international headquarters to expand internationally. I think the Middle East region is very attractive destination and we are bringing delegation to Qatar to strengthen that relationship, so that when these firms come to invest here we would love to see more collaboration and investment not only by the sovereign fund but also other investors in the private sector as well,” he added

On behalf of the Hong Kong SAR Government, the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC) signed a MoU with the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) yesterday with the goal of deepening the collaboration across multiple financial services areas between Qatar and Hong Kong.

This MoU signing is a follow-up from an earlier visit to Qatar by the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Christopher Hui, in 2023. Since then, Qatar leaders also visited Hong Kong during the Asian Financial Forum in early 2024.

There have been regular follow-ups by both organisations, as well as InvestHK. We are committed to deepen our collaboration in key financial services areas - asset and wealth management, fintech, digital assets, and family offices.

The Undersecretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Joseph Chan, the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC), InvestHK, and Cyberport led a delegation of over 30 Hong Kong and Mainland China business leaders to Doha on May 5-6.

Over the past two days, the Hong Kong and Mainland China delegates have had numerous group meetings and networking opportunities with the local Qatar stakeholders - QFC, QIA, QDB, Invest Qatar, Qatar Foundation, QSTP, regulators, investors, family offices, channel partners in digital assets, fintech, wealth management, to deepen our collaboration and uncover concrete business opportunities. The delegates also had a chance to learn about the culture by visiting the National Museum of Qatar.

Leung further explained that Qatar can leverage Hong Kong’s strengths to its advantage. “In Hong Kong, we have been experimenting lots of innovation such as tokenization and digital assets and would like to work more closely with Qatar.”

Highlighting some of the key sectors of interest for investors from Hong Kong, he said, “The senior officials have been making our stance very clear in terms of our positioning as a major green finance and green tech hub. We would love to work with investors around the world to promote these movements. It could be new energy, new materials, or any of the technology layers that can promote a better tracking of the green behaviour. We see quite a lot of green fintechs using different technologies and access to different data.”

Sharing his perspectives on the intersection between fintech and AI, Global Head of Financial Services and Fintech stated, “We are seeing the intersection of AI, big data, blockchain, and cloud. A lot of the financial institutions are now using fintech, which with that AI capability can help streamline a lot of the internal processes. We have seen a lot of AI innovation in the fintech space that are empowering the financial institutions to transform their operation, to raise their ability to service their clients.”

Leung also shared the emerging opportunities and shed light on outlook for Qatar and Hong Kong. “We have a pretty broad spectrum of companies from venture capitalists to asset managers, to fintech firms to insurance companies. We also have the Chinese Asset Management Association leaders joining us. Some of the delegates are with the technology background in the form of AI company, applying mostly in financial services sector, we have the fintech, the regulatory technology companies. We are also keen to learn more about the Qatar Science and Technology Park.”

He further added, it’s not just collaboration in fintech or financial services but also in food security. One of the discussions with the Qatar partner is to bring a vertical, essentially this is an indoor facility in growing grass but in a way that has enormous efficiency.”