Financial Secretary Paul Chan on Monday said bringing more strategic enterprises to Hong Kong helps the government get closer to the vision of the city becoming an innovation and technology centre. The finance chief made the comment at a signing ceremony involving the government's Office for Attracting Strategic Enterprises (OASES) and 17 companies from sectors including life and health technology, artificial intelligence and data science, fintech, advance manufacturing and new energy. With the companies in attendance, along with about 50 who got on board earlier, billions of dollars of investment are expected in the coming years, Chan said. "Together with the first two batches of partners, more than HK$42 billion of investment will be made and over 17,000 jobs will be created in the coming few years. It is particularly heartening to note that about 90 percent of the new batch of enterprises are planning to set up their international or regional headquarters here in Hong Kong," he said. Chan said almost all of the enterprises attracted earlier have commenced operations in Hong Kong, and nearly 70 percent have chosen to set up their offices at either the Science Park or Cyberport. Prophesee – a French company that builds vision sensors that mimic the way the human eye works – was one of the enterprises that recently signed a partnership with the SAR. CEO and co-founder Luca Verre said the company has offices in Shanghai, Japan and the US and was thrilled to grow its presence in Hong Kong. "Because it's a unique hub for the company to address the largest market opportunity for the company, which is the Asia-Pacific market, in particular, the mainland China market," he said. Besides looking for market growth, Verre also said he's confident that the research capabilities of the city will help in developing the firm's technology. "It's always extremely attractive to work with top researchers to push the boundaries of this technology... and actually it turned out that Hong Kong has an incredible ecosystem from that point of view because within a relatively small area, actually the top five universities of Hong Kong are today doing some research related directly or indirectly within neuromorphic technologies," he said.
