All eyes were on how bad HSBC was burnt in the US subprime crisis, which led to billions of dollars in write-offs from almost every equity account of Wall Street big boys and in some cases forced their top men from office.

HSBC concluded that it was still ahead - not of its rival but of its internal performance benchmark.

In the bank's words, third-quarter profit was ahead of the same quarter last year; so was its performance in the first nine months. It said business in Europe was 'strongly ahead' of the same quarter a year earlier.

That was, however, not a common investor feeling. Analyst Alex Potter of London brokerage Collin Stewart told Bloomberg: 'Given that they have increased provisions by more than US$1 billion, for them to say pre-tax profit in the third quarter is ahead is little short of amazing.'

A piece of good news emerged in the pre-close trading update conference call. A reporter offered congratulations to chairman Stephen Green for his new daughter.

We checked with the HSBC public relations troop, which tried hard but could not confirm the breaking news for its chairman because 'Mr Green is a private man, unlike Sir John.'

Mr Green is listed as married with two daughters. Our best guess, guided by his people, was that he probably became a new grandfather.

One thing for sure was, Mr Green just marked his 59th birthday last Wednesday. Judging from the initial post-results share price, he could hang on to his job.

Joyce heads for privatisation

A day after Joyce Ma and her family quit their directorship, Joyce Boutique was suspended from trading pending a proposed privatisation from majority shareholder Peter Woo Kwong-ching.

In a politely worded news release from Joyce Boutique, Mr Woo thanked the Ma family for the past seven years as working partners, particularly chairman Walter Ma for his being 'a true professional and a gentleman'.

'We had not anticipated this change but respect their decision,' said Mr Woo. 'We wish them a wonderful retirement with health and prosperity.'

Joyce Ma was quoted as saying Mr Woo would continue to build on the legacy of the Joyce brand.

We take it to mean Joyce Boutique would not change its name to Jennifer after Mr Woo's daughter. Jennifer Woo Chung-yan is managing director of Lane Crawford Joyce Group and heir to Mr Woo's retail and fashion empire.

Why HKEx is a favourite

Take a guess, how much income does our stock trading mechanism generate per day?

The latest quarterly results of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing logged trading fees and tariffs of HK$1.96 billion in the first nine months to September. With 184 trading days in that period, the daily amount worked out to be more than HK$10 million.

If listing fees, clearing and settlement fees, custody and information income were included, the HKEx recorded nearly HK$5.5 billion in revenue, a 93 per cent surge from a year ago.

Profit in the first nine months was HK$4.01 billion, or more than HK$22 million per trading day. That should explain why HKEx is a favourite stock of brokers and investors alike.

Finet strikes back

The controversy over whether Mongolia Energy Corp was indeed co-operating with three leading state-owned enterprises has taken a new twist.

Two months after Mongolia Energy filed a high court writ against Finet.hk for its investigative reporting, the financial website struck back yesterday.

Editor Law Yee-ping wrote in her column that if Mongolia Energy could produce evidence that its three partners were indeed SOEs, she'd eat the printed version of her article.

Her audacious challenge apparently scared away Mongolia Energy investors. The stock tumbled as much as 30 per cent before recovering to close at HK$11.56, still down 16 per cent. Mongolia Energy said it was not aware of any reasons why its share price tumbled.