Morgan Stanley has supplied its entire Hong Kong investment banking team with restricted-use devices for trips to mainland China, the Financial Times reported citing undisclosed sources.
Earlier this year, the bank gave an iPhone and an iPad to more than 300 Hong Kong-based employees, the report said.
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Five people familiar with the matter told the publication the devices have “limited functionality”, with access only to “work emails and online meeting apps”.
The arrangement stands out because such measures are more commonly used for US-based executives travelling to China than for staff based in Hong Kong.
Morgan Stanley’s Hong Kong investment bankers include everyone from junior analysts to managing directors.
The move comes as banks and other multinational companies face stricter data compliance demands in both China and the US. Cross-border data flows are increasingly being treated by both governments as a national security issue.
China has tightened its cyber security framework in recent years and imposed strict data localisation rules. The US has also moved to limit the bulk transfer of sensitive personal data to “countries of concern”, with China specifically targeted.
That has pushed global companies to further separate their technology systems in mainland China from those used elsewhere, including Hong Kong.
For banks, this has turned what was once a theoretical risk into a day-to-day operational issue.
Many multinational companies in China now run two separate digital environments. One supports international operations through western cloud infrastructure such as Amazon’s cloud, while another is used for mainland Chinese client data through local providers such as AliCloud.
This split can complicate work for employees who move regularly between the two systems and jurisdictions.
Hong Kong-based investment bankers are among the most frequent travellers to mainland China. Their travel has been driven in part by rising activity from Chinese companies seeking listings in Hong Kong.
Bankers are also expected to take part in “bake-offs”, where they pitch advisory services to Chinese companies planning to list in the city.
One Morgan Stanley banker based in Hong Kong told the Financial Times he made five trips to several Chinese cities in April.
Other large US investment banks have not taken the same step, according to the report. Employees at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan told the publication that their firms do not have a dedicated travel-device policy for mainland China.
