Airline CEO out amid Hong Kong unrest
HONG KONG — The CEO of Cathay Pacific Airways stepped down Friday after a storm of criticism from the Chinese government and state news media over its employees’ participation in the territory’s protests.
The resignation in one of Hong Kong’s best known international brands could portend greater pressure from Beijing on Hong Kong’s business community as the protests intensify. The airline’s management upheaval came a week after Beijing demanded that Cathay workers who participated in the demonstrations be barred from flying to mainland China and days after government officials met with top management.
Hong Kong companies are scrambling to assert that they side with the leaders of Hong Kong and China and against the unrest. Beijing may increasingly demand that they show that they mean it.
In a filing with Hong Kong’s stock exchange late Friday, Cathay said CEO Rupert Hogg was resigning effective Monday “to take responsibility as a leader of the company in view of recent events.”
Hogg acknowledged in an email to employees Friday evening that Cathay’s reputation and brand had come under immense pressure, “particularly in the all-important market of mainland China.”
“Could we have managed things differently? In hindsight, ‘Yes,’” Hogg wrote without elaborating. He could not be reached for comment.
The news was first reported by China Central Television, the official state broadcaster, minutes before Cathay Pacific issued its news release or posted its notice to the Hong Kong exchange.
Hogg, who began working for Cathay’s parent company in 1986 but had been CEO for only two years, found himself in an increasingly precarious position as this summer’s anti-government demonstrations intensified in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous region of China.
Protests over a proposed law that would have allowed the territory’s government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China, where the Communist Party controls the courts, have broadened into demands that local leaders resign and that Hong Kong residents be allowed to vote in free elections.
The protests have also become bloodier, culminating this week in demonstrations at the city’s airport that snarled traffic and raised questions about Hong Kong’s future.
Big businesses have scrambled to reassure the Chinese government that they condemn the mayhem and support Hong Kong’s Beijing-approved leaders. Jardine Matheson, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate that owns the Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel chain, one of the territory’s largest property developers and other holdings around Asia, said Thursday that it “strongly supported” the local government and that recent violence had “seriously threatened the well-being of our community.”
On Friday, Hong Kong’s richest man, property tycoon Li Ka-shing, bought cryptic full-page ads in several local newspapers, calling in literary language for an end to the unrest.
Mainland China has huge economic heft in this city of 7 million people. Chinese buyers have sent property prices soaring, and mainland developers often outbid local rivals for choice patches of land in a city where attractive plots are scarce.
Cathay Pacific became the target of mainland China’s ire after one of the airline’s pilots was arrested late last month in Hong Kong and charged with rioting. Not long after, the airline said it would investigate accusations that its employees had leaked the travel information for a Hong Kong police soccer team.
In the past week, Cathay has fired four workers for misconduct related to the demonstrations. Hogg also warned employees against taking part in protests that had not been granted approval by Hong Kong authorities.