The Zhitong Finance App learned that recently, Hong Kong's Secretary for Treasury, Mr Hui Ching-yu, and Malaysian government officials and the industry discussed cooperation space in the financial and gold markets. During a meeting with Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, Xu Zhengyu pointed out that the diversification of the Hong Kong capital market, combined with sufficient capital in the banking system, is a reliable partner for the Central Bank of Malaysia to discuss further cooperation in the gold market, tokenization, RMB business, and Islamic bonds.
While meeting with Anil Singh Gill, Chairman of the Malaysian Fintech Association, Xu Zhengyu introduced him to the main measures for fintech development. Hui Ching-yu pointed out that Hong Kong is an ideal place to develop fintech with its sound regulatory environment and business opportunities everywhere.
Attracting more Malaysian companies to set up family offices in Hong Kong was another goal of this visit. Xu Zhengyu had a lunch meeting with representatives of several family offices and related private investment companies, including Sunway Group, Success Group, Royal Selangor, and RHL Ventures. He introduced the booming family office sector in Hong Kong and pointed out that the number of single family offices in Hong Kong has increased by more than 25% in the past two years, and the market also expects the scale of cross-border wealth managed by Hong Kong to grow by an average of about 9% per year between 2025 and 2030. To create a more attractive business environment for family offices, Hong Kong has also submitted legislative proposals to further optimize the preferential tax system to cover more eligible types of investment, such as private equity investment and precious metals.
Xu Zhengyu attended the Global Family Office New Era Summit organized by the Hong Kong Trust Association Kuala Lumpur Office. In his keynote address, he assured participants that Hong Kong, with its robust regulatory system, forward-looking financial framework, and long-standing position as the world's top family office hub, is definitely their “guiding principle” in the unpredictable global transformation.
He further explained, “The data on Hong Kong is by no means just a bright figure on paper; it is a strong and unquestionable market signal that ultra-high net worth families are taking practical actions to enter Hong Kong, stay in Hong Kong to develop, and build the family's heritage from generation to generation in Hong Kong. Earlier this month, our securities regulator released an annual survey showing that the size of assets managed in Hong Kong in 2025 jumped 20% year-on-year to a record $5.4 trillion. Net capital inflows to Hong Kong have almost tripled from year to year to US$265 billion.”
He encouraged participants to use Hong Kong as an external gateway to lay out private capital and unlimited opportunities for global investment. By setting up a family office in Hong Kong, they can make good use of Hong Kong's advantages to unlock unparalleled structural synergies, including a new central gold clearing and settlement system supervised by Hong Kong Precious Metals Central Clearing Systems Co., Ltd., which is wholly-owned by the government, and the first phase of “physical connectivity” launched in cooperation with the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
During a meeting with Peng Anpu, the general president of the Federation of Malaysian Diamond and Jewelers Associations, Xu Zhengyu told Peng Anpu that Hong Kong is working to establish a unified and expandable platform for global participants to provide reliable services such as clearing, connectivity, price discovery, risk management, warehousing and insurance. Major market participants supported Hong Kong's central gold clearing and settlement system during the trial operation phase. The trading volume of US dollar gold futures contracts continued to reach new highs, and quite a bit of gold has already been stored in designated warehouses. The Malaysian gold industry can take advantage of Hong Kong's new initiatives to explore the space for cooperation between the two sides.