When the minimum wage law was going through the Legislative Council, there was confusion over its implications. Labour leaders of course lobbied for a high dollar figure, while employers of low-paid workers demanded much less. Some people expected a loss of low-paid jobs; if anything, the higher wage attracted some retired people back into the labour market.
Some industries and sectors probably paid relatively little interest to it. My own company, a modern, services-based business in which most employees are educated and skilled, did not expect to be affected by it. As it happened, we were wrong. The law's wording can in theory get any company into trouble if it does not take care about keeping records of staff working hours. So all prudently run firms had to take measures to comply with the law.
A competition bill is now being put through the legislative process, and the situation reminds me of this. People have long demanded such a law, and there is a lot of debate about it among lawyers and business lobbies.
There has been discussion about mergers, which do not happen often in modern Hong Kong. Potentially, if two big players in an industry united, we would be left with a dominant group coming close to being a monopoly. But big companies are often run by rival families who would never give up control to one another.
Perhaps the biggest fuss surrounding the proposed legislation concerns small and medium-sized enterprises. SMEs complained that the original draft of the law was too vague, and that they would incur heavy legal costs making sure they complied. There were also fears that bigger players would - in essence - get smaller ones into trouble on competition grounds as an aggressive business tactic.
I must confess that I have not followed this subject very closely. My company is focused on the general insurance industry; it is a services-based business with a large number of players of varying sizes and national backgrounds. It is so competitive that some companies lose money on underwriting in order to gain market share. I assumed a competition law would not really affect us.