The Richie Rich place

Sometimes when I’m doing my walkabout of Hong Kong in the line of duty, I imagine I can get a faint whiff of money. It’s a refined, haute smell, very different from the new-rich scents of the sort that overhang booming Indian cities. Most others in Hong Kong, of course, complain that the only thing they can smell are the foul fumes from the smokestacks upwind in mainland China, but I’ve always sniffed at such unaromatic
suggestions.

Well, the findings of a recent survey by a wealth-tracking consultancy establish that my olfactory powers are working to perfection. Some 87,000 people in Hong Kong (or 14 out of every 1,000 persons) is a US-dollar millionaire (equivalent to about Rs 4 crore), according to the survey conducted by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch. This gives Hong Kong with one of the highest concentration of high networth people in the world. These 87,000 millionaires hold a combined US$460 billion in financial assets.

In addition, Hong Kong is also home to some 1,340 “ultra-millionaires” - defined as people with net assets (excluding primary residence and consumables) in excess of US$30 million (about Rs 120 crore).  With the stock market and the property market in Hong Kong continuing to boom this year, the number of Richie Rich folks will only increase.

Hong Kong’s best and brightest may be getting richer, but they aren’t getting a life. A survey on work-life balance, conducted by Community Business, a non-profit CSR initiative, reveals that 1 out of every 4 Hong Kong employees would even consider leaving the territory to embrace better work-life balance overseas. Employees were typically working 49.2 hours a week, well over the maximum of 40 hours a week recommended by the ILO.

And over 60% of those surveyed said they suffered from prolonged fatigue, which impacted the little time they spent with their families - and skewed their work-life balance. Community Business CEO Shalini Mahtani says that the survey findings are a “wake-up call” for Hong Kong businesses. “As economies around the globe compete for talent, work-life balance for employees must become a key componentof Hong Kong’s competitive advantage.”

In an effort to remedy my own work-life balance (and as part of my attempts at acculturation), I recently learnt to playing mahjong with a few Chinese friends. The “parlour game” of skill, strategy, calculation and luck was banned in China under Chairman Mao Zedong but is today something of a national obsession. Families and friends team up to play it for fun at home - or for high stakes at gambling dens that resonate with the clickety-click of the colourful, rectangular tiles. Even a Chinese wedding is considered incomplete without a few rounds of mahjong.

Perhaps it was just beginner’s luck, but on my first day at the table, I trounced my friends, who are old hands at the game. Now, if I can only keep up the hot streak even while playing some high-stakes rounds, who knows, I might end up adding to the statistics of Hong Kong’s millionaires…