When a Japanese company did it in 1989, polite people described the chairman as 'eccentric'.
When a Korean and a Dutch company did the same thing 10 years ago, the Hong Kong media queried the sanity of their senior management.
And very quietly, a whole host of companies have done the same thing in the decade since: a supermarket chain from Britain; another from Germany; a department store chain from Sweden; entire units of major financial services companies; and many, many others. A British education group is in the process of following the same route as I write.
There have been some other straws in the wind, too: rumours HSBC was thinking of coming back (some senior personnel did), while the head of one of the big four accounting firms, KPMG, relocated here earlier this year.
But until a Japanese car company did it, too, and gave its reasons in public, the concept didn't really capture much attention.
That all changed last week when Nissan announced it was moving the global headquarters of its Infiniti luxury car brand to Hong Kong.
The reason chief executive Carlos Ghosn gave for the decision was classic in its cogency and simplicity: we want to be close to our customers.
