How can the salaries in HK be underpaid??? It's one of the most expensive cities in the world with a competitive tax structure.

I think HK quants are not underpaid..A friend of mine studied hku actuarial science and graduated in 2004He didn't pursue his career in insurance industryHis starting salary was 100K usd (2004) ( worked for an insurance company and felt underpaid ,then switched to UBS as a junior quant)but of coz the bonus is not that attractive compared to those working in US and UK I read an article saying those quant analysts in Singapore are paid 40% on average lower than analysts in HK

DY is absolutely right That is what is happening in HKpeople are pushed to study CFA, FRM, master and PhDeveryone wants to get into ibankI guess people want to try their luck....even bachelor of arts graduates....There is nothing to lose btw, there are not many quants in HK...

It seems that UBS is an extraordinary rich bank. I have friends working for top tier US ibanks in HK and Tokyo as junior with salary at about 40K and 70k respectively. Some guys are keenly learning Japanese in dream of relocating to Tokyo. Some are planning to have a further Phd in UK or US. If you are not senior people working in HK, you have definitely no hope to relocate to London or New York, even to Tokyo is quite impossilbe. While at the moment JPMoragan began outsouring IT developpers to India and UBS began setting up research quants in mainland China. The futur seems miraculously unimaginable in this incessant procedure of globalisation.Yes HK is expensive, but only at the same level as Paris. Can it be compared with Tokyo, Osaka, London, Geneve, Zurich? HK is a prosperous, crowded and tiny British Concession town in China with a total capitalist/liberalism social system. That is to say, regulation and tax is comparatively ignored in HK. Historically speaking, gold,FX and future markets in HK are always over volatile. It is a paradise for speculation and traffic. Men have too much pressure in this tiny town with few welfare and extremely high housing cost. At about 7 million people gathering in that small mountain and island city makes housing cost as expensive as in Tokyo. Professionals there work for too many hours which can not be imagined. There are too many miserable stories that Chinese and Japanese workaholics work to death whilst making the economy more and more prosperous.I was heard that many professionals in HK spend leisure time in the nearest Chinese town named Shenzhen. It is said there has the most delicious food in the world while costing 80% cheaper than in HK. Historically speaking, HK is not a high tech city compared with other mandarin speaking cities such as Singapore, Taipei and Shanghai. So many Hongkongese elite began migrating to Shanghai, New York, California, Vancouver and Toronto since the end of 1990s. One thing for sure, HK is the center for commerce and finance outside Japan in Asia Pacific region and the competition there is unimaginable severe. "People are pushed to study CFA, FRM, master and PhD"

QuoteHK is a prosperous, crowded and tiny British Concession town in China It's been nearly nine years since HK ceased to be a Brit possession, although some (many?) aspects of its law are still based on English law.

"some" or "many" are both wrong description.Hong Kong laws are still based on English's common law regime and nobody (in HK or in China) has shown an intention to change the legal system. At least they keep it to themselve even if they really want...

QuoteOriginally posted by: keepmeokI was told there were 5000 applicants for 3 quant positions, only 50 out of 5000 secured an interview and 3 were hired ,all are PhDsthe market is really competitive, u know. Chinese University and UST offer Bsc quantitative finance, HKU, UST, CITYU offer mfeeven actuarial science students look at quant positions. We also need to consider those who pursuit their MFE overseas...UST's BSc in QF housed in the B-School is getting its first or second batches of gradates this year, it's master's programme housed in the math dept hasn't even started the first semester yet.... Not many from cityu's undergraduate FE got quant jobs bc the overall school reputation is not as good as HKU, UST or Chinese U. So the competition and supply of work force are from overseas graduates. In fact the proportion of highschool students promoted to universities in HK are far lower than that in the US or Europe.

QuoteFollowing our honourable tradition of trying to quantify everything, I would like to estimate the local candidate pool in HK. Realistically, we would expect quants to have either a PhD in physical science/ engineering or have done a MFE. The US population is 40 times more than HK. In 2003, US had awarded less than 12000 PhD in (Maths/CS/Physics/Engineering/Earth Science). Assuming the ratio is the same in HK, that's about 300/yr. HK has 7 universities. Let all of them offer a MFE class each year (with a size of 50 each), we get another 350/yr. Of course, there are oversea applicants. But, the courses mentioned may also be taken by foreigners. It is fair to assume the two effects cancel out each other.... With an annual supply of 650 candidates a year, we need 7+ years to get 5000 qualified applicants even if every sci PhD and MFE are unemployed and with no interest in other jobs other than quant. We can imagine how bad the signal to noise ratio is. I feel sorry for the HR.It is fair to assume that the number of serious contester to be in low hundreds (or tens) at any given time.To futher narrow down your estimation, HK is awarding far far far fewer than 300 hard science PhD each year, if check out the universities' webpage and do the tally. There are only 3 research-oriented universities in HK. The other 4 universities are teaching-oriented, with 2 of them focus in liberal arts. There are only 2 MFE programmes in HK (3 in the coming year), with a total enrolment around 50 only.

UST's BSc in QF housed in the B-School is getting its first or second batches of gradates this year,<true, it's master's programme housed in the math dept hasn't even started the first semester yet....<also true Not many from cityu's undergraduate FE got quant jobs bc the overall school reputation is not as good as HKU, UST or Chinese U. <<also true, they don't even have interviews.....So the competition and supply of work force are from overseas graduates. <<true, and some are PhDs.In fact the proportion of highschool students promoted to universities in HK are far lower than that in the US or Europe.<<17% students are accepted to local Universities annually, but a lot of students go overseas overall, around 35-40% (20-40 age group) are degree-holderthe supply also comes from chinese who were born overseas (ABC) most quants in HK are educated overseas

The competition is so tense mainly because there are not many quant positions in HK and there are too many Chinese.

I picked up on this thread while reading through some older stuff on this forum:I am seeing that there are very few f/o quants in HK because most institutions run this kind of support out of London (or sometimes Tokyo or NY). There are a couple of exceptions to this who have FO quants on the ground in HK and they have been mentioned earlier in this thread. The landscape is changing now - over the next 2-3 years I expect to see a number of quant groups develop in HK as more and more banks are getting to a stage where local pricing and RM support will give them a competitive edge - not least in smooth communication between trading and quant analytics. Another thing worth commenting on - HK salaries are slightly below London from what I see - this is more than made up by the favourably low income tax (c15% flat rate).Some previous contributors to this thread seemed knowledgeable on the HK quant scene - how have they seen things develop in the last few months? i think it is interesting times for HK....

I have got an impression that many quant teams in Hong Kong and Singapore are merely outposts of the their NY/London headquarters. To illustrate a rather interesting example, I am going to tell a story about my friend in Singapore. His line manager is in London (i.e. he actually needs to ring London when applying for his annual leave) and, as expected, he need to talk to his boss fairly regularly -- you can imagine how his work day is like... Who controls the headcounter is an interesting question, which in turn lead to another big unknown: for FO positions in Hong Kong (also Singapore and Tokyo) whether the banks tend to use the local HHs or use the same HHs as in London/ NY.

QuoteOriginally posted by: BroardviewThe competition is so tense mainly because there are not many quant positions in HK and there are too many Chinese.Imagine, a country of 1,000,000,000 would-be quants!