Brokerage victims to get quicker payment
The Government will next week unveil radical new legislation that will see victims of collapsed brokerages offered compensation soon after a brokerage's demise and before an accurate picture of total client losses has been established.
Sources said the new legislation was aimed at preventing a repeat of the outrage from CA Pacific clients angry about the delays and uncertainty over their compensation following the collapse of the brokerage.
The proposed legislation is expected to go before Legco next month and will open the way for CA Pacific investors to receive payment from the compensation fund almost immediately.
Presently, claimants must wait until all compensation claims have been received and processed by the stock exchange, a process that can last months - especially when there are serious disputes over claimant eligibility.
The Securities and Futures Commission and the stock exchange are expected to announce next week investors of failed CA Pacific will receive a maximum payout per client of slightly more than $150,000, lower than the $200,000 estimated by authorities in January.
The drop in compensation is understood to be a result of the number of brokerage collapses in the past few months and concerns the size of the total payout will soon exceed the compensation fund's resources.
The Government, SFC and stock exchange will decide on a case-by-case basis the maximum amount to be paid out per client of each failed brokerage.
Sources said the payout range in the CA Pacific case would see about 70 per cent of clients compensated in full.
Details of the proposed CA Pacific compensation package are to be released next week after a stock exchange council vote on Wednesday.
Sources confirmed cash clients and margin clients who had not used their credit lines would be eligible for compensation.
Following the CA Pacific collapse, the Government said the existing $480 million compensation fund for clients of all failed brokerages would be enlarged to $1.08 billion with the stock exchange and SFC each injecting up to $300 million.
The exchange and the SFC have so far injected $150 million each, enlarging the compensation fund to $780 million.
SFC chairman Anthony Neoh said $780 million should be sufficient to cover compensation payouts for CA Pacific and two other recently collapsed brokerages - Forluxe Securities and Ming Fung Group's Chark Fung Securities.
A stock exchange council member said many members would prefer the compensation model apply solely to CA Pacific - or at the most be extended to the other two and no more.
'It could be a bottomless pit,' he said.
It could also present a moral hazard in that brokers would pay less attention to potential collapse if they knew their clients would receive full compensation, he said.
Forluxe had 630 clients who made claims close to $47 million while Chark Fung had 2,000 clients making claims of about $500 million.
Meanwhile, 300 clients of the collapsed Ming Fung Group yesterday met with Deputy Secretary for Financial Services Rebecca Lai Ko Wing-yee and demanded full compensation.
'We believed the SFC and the exchange were able to ensure the fitness of brokers so we invested in the stock market,' clients' representative Wong Tze-cheong said. 'Now the SFC and the exchange have failed in their duties and should compensate us for our losses.'
