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A top executive at US hedge fund Bridgewater Associates has bought a $12.2mn home in one of Hong Kong’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, in a move cheered by a government official as a sign of international confidence in the territory.
Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, bought the property in Hong Kong’s Kadoorie Hill, which has for decades been home to some of the area’s wealthiest families, for HK$95mn in July.
Albert Goh, a senior official at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, brought up Prince’s purchase during a panel discussion at a finance conference in the territory on Wednesday.
“Bob, sorry to put you on the spot — in Hong Kong, property ownership is a matter of public record”, he said, to laughter from the audience.
“Everybody in Hong Kong will be delighted to know that you have just bought a mansion in prime Hong Kong,” he added, and invited a round of applause for Prince from the audience.
“I can’t believe how much of a conversation topic it is that [I] bought an apartment somewhere,” Prince said in response. There is no suggestion that he is planning to live there full-time.
The deal comes at a time when Hong Kong, where real estate is a vital engine of the local economy, has suffered a prolonged property slump. As of last month, the average value of luxury residential property in the city was 11.3 per cent below its January 2022 level, according to real estate agency JLL.
At the same time, political change and rising tensions between Washington and Beijing have put some professionals off working there. In 2020, the US revoked the territory’s special trade status, saying Hong Kong was no longer sufficiently autonomous to warrant being treated differently from mainland China.
Asked at the conference why he made the investment, Prince said: “The very, very short rationale would be, solid fundamentals, negative sentiment, and from an investment standpoint that’s always a good combination.”
From a business standpoint, Hong Kong “is what it’s always been really”, Prince said. “I think that the prospects even for Hong Kong in relation to pan-Asia are tremendous, as we get expansions of capital markets across Asia.”
He said Bridgewater did business throughout Asia and “Hong Kong’s right in the middle, so everything’s accessible from here . . . and then from a personal standpoint, [it’s a] fun, great city, great culture, great restaurants.”
The “Greater Bay Area” project, a Beijing plan to integrate Hong Kong with neighbouring areas in mainland China, is a “fabulous concept”, Prince added. “Imagine if you put Silicon Valley next to New York and tied them together somehow, that’s a dynamite combination.” He could not be reached for further comment.
Prince was speaking at a conference organised by the HKMA, the territory’s de facto central bank. The two-day event took place as a Hong Kong court sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to up to 10 years in prison and as former media tycoon and Chinese Communist party critic Jimmy Lai testified in a national security trial that could sentence him to life imprisonment.
The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation had called for finance leaders to withdraw from the HKMA event.
Kadoorie Hill is one of the territory’s most exclusive residential neighbourhoods, according to Joseph Tsang, chair of JLL in Hong Kong. “It is a secluded and quiet area which is also very close to the city’s urban areas,” he said, adding that today’s prices were “much more reasonable than before”.
Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio bought two multimillion-dollar “shophouses” in Singapore, the Financial Times reported in May.
Separately, Bridgwater and State Street this week announced a partnership in the US that will aim to enlarge the market for complex products including hedge funds and private equity and credit.
Additional reporting by Cheng Leng
