The Singapore International Monetary Exchange (Simex) yesterday relaunched its controversial Hong Kong stock index futures contract, successfully circumventing an attempt by the Hong Kong stock exchange to undermine it by banning the flow of 'live' stock data.
Sources said the provision of live information to Simex's trading floor indicated one or more data providers had breached confidentiality contracts with the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Simex chairman Victor Liew said he was pleased with the first-day response and was optimistic the product would help the exchange strengthen its regional futures business.
In Singapore, 672 December contracts were traded, compared with about 7,000 on the Hong Kong Futures Exchange.
A spokesman for the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong yesterday repeated a threat to take action against data vendors that supplied real-time price information to an off-shore market, claiming such actions were in breach of contract.
'On that, we have issued a letter to all data vendors, giving them three months' notice [of possible action]. After that we shall see what action we have to take,' the spokesman said.