Last day

The German Swiss International School Hong Kong (GSIS) was established in 1969 by German Swiss families who were looking for a bilingual German-English education in Hong Kong for their children. The schools main campus is located in The Peak, Hong Kong.

More than 1,300 students from over 30 countries are taught by a team of teachers from German and English-speaking countries.

The school offers education from kindergarten to secondary school with a choice of the following two school systems: the German or the British one, which correspond to the curriculum and education system in each individual country. Moreover, it also has a business college, which offers in collaboration with the German Chamber of Commerce two training programs “Wholesale & Foreign Trade” and “Transport & Logistics”.

Furthermore, GSIS provides various extracurricular activities for the students. They have a wide range of afternoon activities as for example Tennis, Chess, Speech and Drama classes, Chinese painting, Hip Hop/ Jazz Funk Dance, Horse Riding and many more! These activities are charged and taught by external companies and GSIS teachers. Nevertheless, the school also offers Primary and Secondary extracurricular (sport and non-sport) activities which are delivered by GSIS teachers after the normal school day. In contrast to the afternoon activities these lessons are free of charge, however, once a student has enrolled in the program, these lessons become part of the school day and the student is expected to attend on a regular basis.

When visiting the GSIS the students of the HSBA are looking forward to gain insights into one of the leading international schools in Hong Kong and its education system and cultural diversified community. 

Thursday afternoon at Hong Kong Invest

Hong Kong is the heart of Asia, it functions as a connector between China and the rest of the world. With one of the lowest and simplest tax systems and more than sixty million visitors annually it is a good place to start a new business. To support potential investors, the governmental institution HK invest exists. They provide customized services and free advice to help businesses succeed. Some of the services HK invest offers are e.g.  giving information on Hong Kong’s business environment, providing information about emigration requirements and employment legislations or arranging relevant business meetings.

As the main task of invest is to give their customers advice about the business environment and regulations in Hong Kong we decided to visit this institution during our stay. For us as business students it will be interesting to see which requirements are needed to open a business or which regulations have to be respected. As a first step just for information but maybe one day one of us might come back to the advices we will receive!

A day at Maersk

Let’s get to know Maersk first.

What is Maersk and what is Maersk doing?

Maersk Line is part of the Maersk group, a collection of shipping and energy companies.  With his 630 vessels it is the largest container shipping company in the world and was founded in 1928. Maersk covers ports in almost all over the world – 343 ports in 121 countries – with a market share of about 17%.

It all seems that Maersk is a very traditional company; it’s operating in a traditional business and has a quite long history.

But A.P. Moeller, the founder of Maersk, realized that “constant care can prevent losses”.  The concept of constant care was renewed in all the years but it states that Maersk is openminded to innovation, changes in business environment or even ethical questions as in this example from the firm’s website: “For us, innovation is a highly focused discipline that aims to deliver better service, protect our employees and the environment, create new business opportunities and ensure cost-effectiveness.”

On one hand we expect the business in Asia to be different to business in Europe. On the other hand, Hong Kong is quite western, so maybe business there isn’t very much different or unusual?

We hope to get to know about the work atmosphere, business culture or even hierarchy aspects. We’d like to see how Maersk tries to renew container shipping to make it more energy efficient and in the end decrease the impact of container shipping on the environment.

At least, we would like to discuss the impact of the container crisis on Maersk Line and how they deal with the low transport prices to do not end up like Hanjin.

Robin

Back to the roots - Hapag Lloyd

On Wednesday, 5^th October 2016 we’ll visit Hapag Lloyd AG, one oft the largest global liner shipping companies in the world. The company developed from a merger between Hamburg American Line (HAPAG) an the North German Lloyd in 1970. Hapag was founded in Hamburg in 1847 and this is still the place where the group headquarter is located and where the executive board is based as well. About 20.6% of the company is even owned by the city of Hamburg^[1]. That’s why Hapag Lloyd is narrowly connected to our hometown Hamburg and well known by our studying group. We are very interested to get an insight of their work in Hong Kong.

Hapag Lloyd offers 170 ships and employs 9,300 people at 360 locations in 120 countries. About 7,800 employees work on land while 1,500 employees work on board. Volume of sales were at 6.8 billion Euro in 2014. The company has a world market share of around 4,4% which makes it the fifth largest container shipping company in the world, behold figure below.^[2]

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^[1]              Hapag Lloyd. „Hapag Lloyd: About us.“ Constructed on n/a. Accessed on 18 September 2016 [https://www.hapag-lloyd.com/en/about-us.html].

^[2]              Statista. „Hapag Lloyd: Statista Dossier.“ Created on n/a. Accessed on 18 September 2016. [https://de.statista.com/statistik/studie/id/24268/dokument/hapag-lloyd-statista-dossier/].

The market in Asia is important for the company and therefore also the great transition point Hong Kong. Hong Kong connects a wide part of inner china with the globalized world. While our visit we get the opportunity to enjoy a tour through Modern Terminals Limited, a service provider that owns and operates container terminals at Twai Tsing Container Port, Hong Kong. It opened Hong Kong’s first purpose-built container in 1972. Aside from Hong Kong it runs business units in Dachan Bay and Taicang.^[3]

We are happy that we can visit these two companies and are already looking forward to the 5^th October 2016.

Written by Theresa & Felix

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^[3]              Modern Terminals. „Modern Terminals Limited: About us.“ Created on n/a. Accessed on 18 September 2016. [http://www.modernterminals.com/group/index.php/About/index.html].

Blueprint - A good place to start your business in Hong Kong

Blueprint Hong Kong is an organization that is grouping up to ten startups with technical background for a time of six month. In these six month blueprint acts as an accelerator to boost the work of the startups. The boost is generated by shared resources, infrastructure and workspace.

Blueprint is the latest manifestation of Swire Properties which is an organization that develops and manages properties. The properties are located in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Miami and are used for commercial, residential and other business uses. The organization was founded in China in 1866 by John Swire an English businessman.

These days blueprint is located in TaiKoo Place one of Hong Kong´s premier business districts. On two floors of a Swire Properties owned building the startups have access to professional support as well as interactions with partner organizations and industrial mentors. Additionally they can use co-working areas and event spaces to unify and share the interest in tech and build a platform for the exchange of ideas.

In connection to the topic of the excursion - Hong Kong: Gate to Asia – From International Trade and Finance to Digital Economy – the change from the history of John Swire who has moved to China to expand his trading business, to the future with blueprint as a part of Swire Properties and an good example for an organization that supports the markets of digital economy.

All members of the excursion look forward to receiving many new impressions by the meeting at the premises of blueprint.

Steffen

Snapask - Any homework issues we can solve?

We are happy to introduce you to one of the two companies we are going to visit on Tuesday during our stay in Hong Kong. The innovative startup Snapask will be the first visit in the morning hours.

In the March edition of the „Hong Kong Business“ magazine the startup „Snapask“ was rated 7^th on the ranking „Hong Kong’s hottest startups in 2016“. It is an application, which offers students help for their homework. For example a student can take a photo of his mathematics homework and then gets one of the 2000 professional tutors within only 17 seconds on average (according to Snapask’s website).The tutor will communicate via text messages, voice messages or photos to find a solution for the homework. This also works for several other subjects.

The first three so called „Snaps“ (photos of the homework) are for free. After these three were used, the students get the opportunity to subscribe to two options: Either use up to 10 snaps per month for HK$ 98 per month or have unlimited snaps and the choice of their tutor for HK$ 368 per month.

The company was founded in October 2014 and managed to get 50,000 users. They raised US$ 1.4 mio. until March 2015.

During our visit it will be interesting to find out about differences between German and Hongkong startups and also get some further details on their business model, problems they faced in the past and plans for the future. The company might also invite one of their interns or recent graduates to share the view on working for a startup. However it will be a challenge to fit all this content in the one hour visit.

Tatjana

Partner University - Hang Seng School of Commerce

Later on the first day of our excursion we are going to visit the Hang Seng Management College. It was founded in 2010 by the HSSC, the Hang Seng School of Commerce.

The HSMC has five different Schools:
The School of Business, the School of Decision Sciences, the School of Communication, the School of Humanities & Social Science and finally the School of Translation. 195 full-time academic staff members are working at the Management School and are teaching the 5000 students that study there. Currently there are 14 four-year bachelor’s degree programs offered, including one in Business Administration (with concentrations in Accounting, Banking & Finance, and Marketing).

With our short visit, we want to gain an insight, on how studying Business Administration in Hong Kong could look like: How the bachelor program differs from ours, how the college itself is organized and what it offers its students.

Pia 

First stop - Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce

Our first stop on Monday morning will be the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce. Hopefully everybody arrived safely until then to get this exciting week started. We thought it would be a great start to get an overview of Hong Kong´s economy.

The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1861. Now, it represents the oldest, yet most dynamic business organization in Hong Kong. Their members consist of a wide spectrum of local, Mainland Chinese and international businesses. Additionally, more than half of the flagship corporations listed on the Hang Seng Index is part of the Chamber of Commerce. Their membership, from renowned multinationals to thriving SMEs, employ around one third of the local workforce which is a lot. The Chamber serves as the voice of business and they help their members succeed through their core functions: Knowledge-based events, networking, advocacy and a variety of business documentation services. We are looking forward to hearing something about promoting business interests and integrity.

Jan R.