Good afternoon, Iqbal [Khan], Amy [Lo], Taichi [Takahashi], Steve [Barclay], distinguished guests, colleagues and friends from UBS, it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to IGC (International Gateway Centre) at West Kowloon today.

Sun Hung Kai Properties is honoured to celebrate this important milestone with UBS. The tower we are inaugurating today will bear the UBS name — the UBS name is well recognised around the world as a leading global wealth manager. Thank you for the confidence you have placed in us and in West Kowloon and Hong Kong.

For decades, Sun Hung Kai Properties is proud to have built several landmark buildings along both sides of Victoria Harbour. In the early 2000s, we developed IFC in Central, which set a new benchmark for Grade A office buildings in Hong Kong. In 2008, we completed the ICC in West Kowloon, creating another iconic landmark. 

Today, with the International Gateway Centre, IGC, we are once again setting new standards in placemaking, connectivity and building excellence. The name IGC (International Gateway Centre) reflects its purpose – a gateway for multinational and Mainland enterprises, bringing out West Kowloon’s role as a strategic hub connecting the Greater Bay Area, the Mainland with the rest of the world.

From the outset, West Kowloon has always been envisioned as Hong Kong’s new central business district. Built directly above the city’s only High-Speed Rail Station and seamlessly connecting to the Airport Express, major MTR lines and other principal transport networks, this development sits at the heart of this fast-growing hub.

West Kowloon Station links into a national high-speed rail network of over 50,000 kilometres, reaching more than 100 Mainland destinations and over 500 million more affluent Chinese. This connectivity places West Kowloon firmly within the one-hour living circle of the GBA, with travel times as short as 14 minutes to Futian in Shenzhen and under an hour to Guangzhou.  Over time, there will be even more Mainland cities connected and frequencies will be enhanced.

Since its opening, the High-Speed Rail West Kowloon Station has served well over 100 million passengers. Just last December, it handled a record 140,000 passenger trips in a single day.  The total passenger flow in West Kowloon is close to that of our Hong Kong airport and will probably exceed it in the not so distant future.
With IGC now completed and ready for occupation, we are most honoured to be handing over this first tower of the IGC to UBS, marking a new phase of development for this important IGC project. 

IGC together with our neighbouring ICC, the coming Artist Square Towers in West Kowloon Cultural District, our two world-class luxury hotels at ICC, including The Ritz-Carlton, our mall underneath, and the ELEMENTS mall, all of these will form a commercial cluster of over 8 million square feet. In the coming years, there will be no comparable new commercial development in Hong Kong that can rival the scale, the strategic connectivity to the Mainland and the Hong Kong airport. The impact it’ll create for Hong Kong will be immense. 

This momentum reflects Hong Kong’s enduring strengths as a pre-eminent financial centre, and international asset and wealth management centre. Building on this strong foundation, a robust IPO pipeline at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is creating new wealth and opportunities for the city.  The completion of IGC could not be better timed.

Yet a truly global district must offer more than business advantages. West Kowloon is a place where work, play, learn and entertain will all be covered. Here on the harbourfront, you can enjoy some of the most breath-taking views of Victoria Harbour. Just minutes away is the West Kowloon Cultural District, home to M+, the Hong Kong Palace Museum, the waterfront promenade and expansive green spaces, all within a highly walkable neighbourhood. IGC is truly the last missing piece of the whole West Kowloon district.  On our development’s podium level, a 1.5-kilometre Sky Walk will bring people from established old neighbourhoods such as Jordan, Yau Ma Tei and even Tai Kok Tsui all the way to the West Kowloon waterfront, connecting old and new communities. In fact, I am confident that, with this Sky Walk, people in the older districts in West Kowloon will enjoy much more convenient access to the West Kowloon Cultural District.

Adding to this, our new sky100 on ICC’s 100th floor will reopen in the near future as an aerial viewing deck and hospitality venue high above the iconic harbour. This attraction will be comparable to our Victoria peak on Hong Kong Island.

These strengths – unrivalled connectivity to the Mainland and the world, the scale of whole West Kowloon cluster, neighbouring arts and culture, plenty of green open space, a world class waterfront with Victoria Harbour view — will all come together to form what we now call Central 2.0, Hong Kong’s future-oriented international financial district. It is a place where global finance meets world class arts and culture; where sustainable, people centric design supports both productivity and quality of people’s life; and where unparalleled transport links connect seamlessly to all major districts in Hong Kong, our airport and the entire Greater Bay Area and the Mainland.

It is in this remarkable setting that we are delighted to welcome UBS. On behalf of Sun Hung Kai Properties, I would like to thank Iqbal, Amy, Taichi, Steve and your entire team once again for choosing UBS Tower at IGC as your new home in Hong Kong. We look forward to deepening our partnership in the years to come.  I would like to wish UBS’s business in Asia to grow from strength to strength. We would like the IGC to play a defining role in Hong Kong’s continuing development as a major global hub for wealth management and international finance.

Thank you.