Jake's View | RIP Ronald Li, you did much more good for Hong Kong than harm

Ronald Li's legacy in the development of what is now one of the world's largest bourses lives on despite a fall from grace in 1990 that took him from chairmanship of the exchange to a cell in Stanley Prison.

I briefly chatted recently with a member of the stock exchange's listing committee, who had expressed the usual conundrum of her colleagues: "If we are not meant to decide what is a good or bad listing, but leave that decision to the market, what then are we meant to decide?"

Good question and there has always been a good answer to it but not one that the listing committee can ever publicly reveal.

"You are meant," I said to her, "to know who is a crook and who is not and to keep the crooks out of the market. For a model of how to do it I refer you to the career of Ronald Li."