How interesting to hear the stock exchange tell us in almost a single breath that it wants both to relax listing requirements for warrants and to consider cancelling listings that have proved to be flops.
Yes, progress at last. We are once again to make our stock market an easy meal for the wolves, but, no, we are not soft touches. We will consider telling those wolves they must leave after dessert.
Of course, it may have been a chance remark for exchange chief executive Kwong Ki-chi to say he is studying Nasdaq's practice of delisting companies whose share prices have fallen below US$1 for a certain time. The emphasis of his message was rather that the exchange must make it easier to list warrants or exchanges abroad would take the business away.
Let us remember we have heard this all before. It was the rationale for starting the Trivial Pursuits Board (GEM) two years ago. We were told we had to encourage our small entrepreneurs with lax listing requirements on a special board or they would flee to Nasdaq.
Nasdaq obviously has a few ideas about what to do with the sorts of headaches we have listed on GEM but let's hear it from you, folks. Who is willing to put money down that Mr Kwong is truly serious about Nasdaq-style delistings? He would wipe GEM out tomorrow if he did it.
Here is the conundrum. A stock exchange is not an entrepreneurial firm risking its money to build a business. It is rather a mechanism or a service making it easier for companies to raise the money they need.