It pays Hong Kong to welcome hi-tech companies
The decision to amend stock market listing rules to allow a two-tiered share structure now has Xiaomi working on a city share sale and this will only encourage our own start-ups
As the Hong Kong stock exchange rued the one that got away, praise for honouring a principle was cold comfort for the loss of what remains the world’s biggest tech initial public offering.
We are referring of course to the US$25 billion listing of Alibaba on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014.
If this city’s regulators had been prepared to relax its one-share, one-vote rule to enable the company’s founders to retain board control, it would have been a different story.
Despite the heavy cost, this newspaper said it was the right decision not to bend the rule for Alibaba, which now owns the Post, but that did not mean the long-standing principle itself should not be reviewed and changed, as opposed to bent.
It has taken more than three years of soul-searching amid division among both regulators and officials, but the decision to amend the listing rules to allow a two-tiered share structure has borne quick fruit.