Page 14 - Sphere No.18 (Feb 2007)

Hutchison continued to lay the groundwork andwait
for opportunities to establish a foothold. It has been
seen as being pretty aggressive and the Group is now
operating in all the five business areas that it focuses
on. The UK business community now regards HWL as
a significant player in the country and the Group has
far more suggestions for investment put to it than it
could possibly contemplate.
The Hutchison name is now well known in the fi-
nancial community. But unlike in its home-town
Hong Kong, UK consumers remain largely unaware of
the many ways HWL touches their lives.
One arm of HWL can safely claim to have an im-
pact on all UK consumers because it sits at the heart
of UK trade. Hutchison Ports (UK), the UK subsidiary
of the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings
Group, the world’s largest port developer and opera-
tor, runs three nationally important UK ports - Port of
Felixstowe, Thamesport (London) and Harwich Inter-
national Port. Port of Felixstowe, Hutchison’s first UK
investment back in 1991, is the country’s largest con-
tainer port handling over 40 per cent of all UK trade.
In 2006, HPUK was given the go-ahead by the
UK Government to embark on huge redevelopment
projects at Felixstowe and Harwich. This investment
will help tackle the current shortage of
deep-sea container capacity in the
country and secure the com-
petitiveness of HPUK’s ports
in the international shipping
industry (see box on page 16).
While HPUK rules
the waves, HWL’s
highest profile
UK brand is 3
ates in 56 countries worldwide but
the UK is the only country in which
it has built a presence in all of its five
core sector interests.
In the 1980s HWL had little mean-
ingful investment in any country out-
side Hong Kong except Canada and
decided it would be wise to diversify
geographically. The UK was chosen as
the best prospect for overseas expan-
sion for two main reasons. Firstly, as
Hong Kong was then a British colony,
HWL’s senior managers were familiar with British law
and business practices and the English language. Sec-
ondly, the UK during this period was judged to be less
protectionist than some other European countries and
the US. The UK government actively welcomed for-
eign direct investment and was liberalising a number
of industries and reforming the labour market.
HWL first opened an office in London in 1985 to
find opportunities in industries in which it had exper-
tise and where there was scope for investing manage-
ment and business prowess as well as money.