Last month, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing sealed a HK$17 billion deal to buy the London Metal Exchange.
HKEx was prepared to pay so much largely because it wanted to get its hands on the LME's copper futures contract, the main price discovery tool for the global copper market.
On paper, running the world's leading copper contract should hand HKEx a licence to print money.
Last year, China swallowed up some 40 per cent of the world's copper supply. Yet on a per capita basis, it consumed only 5.6kg per head.
If China's economy now follows the same development trajectory as Japan's did 40 years ago, its per capita demand for copper could double over the next 10 years.
Such heavy demand growth is expected to propel the price of copper, which has already doubled over the last seven years (see the first chart), to even greater heights. For the operator of the world's principal copper contract, that should mean a handsome increase in profits.