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Regulatory complacency a hurdle to foreign listings

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Next Thursday, Professor Chan Ka-keung will make his maiden marketing tour as secretary for financial services and the treasury.

He will tell officials and businessmen in Vietnam, nicknamed 'Little China' by many, that Hong Kong is the best place to list the country's state-owned enterprises.

Given our market's huge turnover, success in financing mainland reform and unrivalled access to investment-thirsty mainland investors, this should be an easy preach.

Yet, it is not. Vietnam's leading dairy product maker, Vinamilk, earlier opted to list in Singapore.

In fact, no foreign company has ever applied to list in Hong Kong. This is despite a year-long marketing effort by the government and the stock exchange to lure overseas issuers here to balance our overreliance on mainland issuers.

The Singapore bourse, which faces the same drying up of listings from the mainland, is doing much better.

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