'Hong Kong back then was a big port recovering from the riots of the late 1960s. Financially, it was a backwater,' Surry recalls. 'The beginnings of a market economy were built on plastic flowers and artificial wigs, which were the main exports. The stock exchange traded quietly with short hours and everyone snoozing.

'I was the first man ever hired to the business desk from London and after a few months we had four people. To begin with, the stories wrote themselves and copy virtually walked in the door. Back then personalities seemed larger than life, and we had the fortune of a lot of access to [then financial secretary] Philip Haddon-Cave.

'The main impetus for the economy picking up was when Ronald Li Fook-shiu set up the Far East Exchange in 1969 to challenge the HKSE', which had been formed in 1947 following the merger of two stockbrokers' associations.

Two other exchanges followed - the Kam Ngan Stock Exchange in 1971 and the Kowloon Stock Exchange in 1972. All four were later to merge. 'Kowloon Stock Exchange in Melbourne Plaza had so many visitors that the fire brigade closed it down at one point for fears the floor would collapse,' Surry recalls.

'The new exchanges prompted emergency measures from the government to limit the practice. But through it retail investors came into equity and the index ran from 150 to 1,775 in 18 months, one of the biggest booms ever.'

One story the Post broke then was of a former deputy commissioner of police running a direct line from his office to the exchange.

There were also lows. Former US president Richard Nixon sent the financial world into spasms when he forced European and Japanese currencies to revalue against the US dollar in August, 1971.

'At that stage the Hong Kong dollar was still linked to sterling, from which it extricated itself and revalued to 5.58 against the US dollar. At the same time Typhoon Rose flattened the colony,' Surry remembers. 'It was a devastating time for the territory.'

Surry remembers the crash in 1973 as 'almost like slow motion'. 'Jardine's made a $666 million bid for Reunion Properties, which was the second-biggest bid ever for a company at the time. They financed it with a major placing of stock - $280 million in Hong Kong and overseas - which put an enormous strain on the market.

'Institutions in England sold short and it was a painful bloodletting which lasted a year or more. [The market] became incredibly quiet. I recall playing checkers with Francis Zimmern [chairman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange] in his office because it was so quiet.'

After Surry's business revolution, the Post never looked back. Neither did Hong Kong. Markets were booming, and even small investors were making a killing on property speculation and stock investments.

Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong Holdings, which had first listed in November, 1972, rose to prominence, then dominance, seizing control of Hutchison Whampoa in September 1979. The container port came into being in 1972, placing Hong Kong firmly at the heart of the region.

With the port came the battle for control of it, and Sir Yue-kong Pao rammed home a winner-takes-all bid in 1980, ousting main rival Hongkong Land. But, as always in Hong Kong, calm waters were far from guaranteed.

'Sir Yue-kong Pao's bid for control of the waterways came with a bold and successful bid for Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf, but it was around 1986 when the global shipping market ran aground,' John Mulcahy (business editor 1985-1987) recalls.

'Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and into the 1980s, Hong Kong was home to some of the iconic shipping titans, among them Y.K .Pao, the Chao family, and C.Y. Tung, father of Hong Kong's current chief executive.

'Y.K. Pao, according to conventional wisdom in the early 1980s, had lost his nerve, selling tonnage aggressively into a rapidly rising market. Equally aggressively, the Tung empire, under Tung Chee-hwa, was buying. Then, calamity struck. Hull values collapsed as freight rates declined, and formerly friendly banks began calling in loans. The Tung empire's flagship, Orient Overseas, was in trouble.'

The Post covered the story along with everyone else, 'but we began to attract some criticism by daring to go beyond the clipped and superficial press releases from the company's public relations consultants and the principal bankers', Mulcahy says.

The pressure came not only from outside the paper. One of the key banks caught up in the affair was, of course, Hongkong Bank, which at that time was the Post's majority shareholder.

''Your figures are inaccurate,' we were told, although our sources, among them banks who were owed almost as much as Hongkong Bank, had provided undeniable documented support for the story,' Mulcahy remembers.

'As we know, the story did not end there. A deal brokered by casino boss Henry Fok [Ying-tung] introduced some mainland Chinese funding at the 11th hour, and Orient Overseas escaped bankruptcy. Orient Overseas has since relisted, Tung Chee-hwa is chief executive of Hong Kong and the banks wrote off the bulk of the debt.'

It wasn't the first time (and surely won't be the last) that the Post found itself up against strong corporate and political interests in the course of its reporting. It is generally acknowledged that the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) transformed Hong Kong's reputation, and probity replaced corruption as the byword for the way business was done - up to a point.

'During the 1980s, the ICAC was investigating the case of a senior government official, with responsibility for bank regulation, who had 'retired' and was living extremely comfortably in San Francisco,' Mulcahy says. 'It came to the attention of a Post reporter that banks had been asked by the ICAC to report any transactions involving this individual.

'A copy of the circular was sourced and verified, and the story ran, headlined: 'Former banking commissioner sought by ICAC.' Within hours, the Commercial Crime Bureau were in the editor's office in Quarry Bay, and the editor, the business editor and a reporter were charged under the draconian anti-corruption legislation. Essentially, the charge was for tipping off an ICAC suspect.

'After negotiations with the prosecutor, it was agreed that the editor and business editor would 'cop a plea' if the reporter were discharged. As a Hong Kong citizen, the reporter knew that a conviction under anti-corruption legislation would almost certainly have put paid to her attempts to emigrate to Australia. The editor and business editor duly pleaded guilty, paid a fine and a conclusion of 'no conviction recorded' was entered.

'The former banking commissioner continued to enjoy his retirement, presumably surviving on the income from dividends on the bank shares that had mysteriously been registered in his name.'

It was fearless journalism like this that was to cement the Post's reputation and help propel it through interesting times in Hong Kong's business environment. Ian Perkin, business editor 1989-91, says the Post became 'the paper of choice'. This stood it in good stead during boom times, when it became an advertising magnet.

It wasn't so easy when he first took over, however. 'We were right in the middle of a recession. That, coupled with the Tiananmen crackdown, had a big affect on the business community. Stock exchange turnover then was around $500 million, which sounds silly now, and there weren't too many big deals.'

Perkin's successor, Nick Thompson, remembers the post-Tiananmen years all too well. He had joined the Post in June, 1989 - as the aftershocks of the crackdown were being felt around the world.

The Hang Seng Index, which had been slowly recovering after the global market collapse and local exchange scandals in 1987, had crashed back to a little over 2,000 points. Business confidence was low and investor sentiment lower.

Thompson, as business editor between 1991 and 1993, witnessed the astonishing turnaround that saw the Hang Seng Index power towards 18,000 points by the mid to late 1990s, as Hong Kong found its feet.

'Looking back, my experience during my first two years at Business Post reflected the hazardous local and global business climate. International events, including the collapse of Australian millionaire Alan Bond's empire and the fraud-riddled Bank of Credit and Commerce International, had direct consequences on Hong Kong.

'BCCI's collapse, which pulled down its local arm, BCCHK, led to a series of bank runs as rumours swept through the population. Even Standard Chartered Bank had to withstand a run from nervous depositors for several days in August that year, and there was extra responsibility on all journalists to report events accurately without inflaming a very volatile situation.

'Another big issue was the serious threat from the Jardine Group - arguably the most influential business empire at the time - to delist from the stock exchange. While this was resolved with a compromise in December 1991, the stand-off was also part of the inexorable and invisible transfer of influence from the British hongs to the new locally controlled powerhouses of Cheung Kong, CITIC, Wharf, New World and Sun Hung Kai.

'Debate over the Hong Kong dollar's peg to its US counterpart was often in the headlines, and with inflation at 12.7 per cent in August, there were serious concerns about the effects on Hong Kong's long-term competitiveness. Combined with a series of acrimonious trade disputes between the US and China, the outlook for the rest of the decade was far from bright.'

Thompson says that if there was a single event that turned things around, it was the surprise visit of Deng Xiaoping to Shenzhen on January 19, 1992. Deng's enthusiastic comments were seen as official endorsement of faster reforms, more foreign investment and the growth of Guangdong into Asia's next 'Little Dragon'.

'In short, he announced that China was open for business. Although unrelated, a series of events in the following months built on the momentum. The Hong Kong government gave the go-ahead for the massive Container Terminal 9 development in February. On March 18, we reported that Hongkong Bank was merging with Britain's Midland Bank through an agreed takeover by HSBC Holdings - creating one of the world's 10 biggest banks. On June 29, the Business Post broke the story that CITIC had joined forces with the Wharf group to secure the rights to build the new Western Harbour Tunnel.

'By the end of 1992, it was clear that Hong Kong had new-found confidence. Our year-end review noted the economy was buoyant with full employment, strong exports and steady GDP growth.

'With Exchange Fund reserves of $236 billion and continuing budget surplus forecasts, we were able to report that 'Hong Kong Inc is still in very good shape'.'

By this time, a focus on critical reporting was synonymous with the Post's business coverage, according to Ray Heath, business editor from 1993 to 1996.

'It was clear we were moving towards critical journalism, so when areas of concern were identified we tended to give them a big play over a longer period of time,' he says.

'Take corporate governance. We reported strongly on directors who failed to provide details of previous criminal convictions - one was Ming Pao, a director of which had undisclosed credit card and firearm offences.'

With the opening of China's markets, Heath says the Post led the way with financial reporting, after assigning a markets reporter to Shanghai.

'In 1993, when I arrived, China's markets were opening and the economy was going wild. We forecast at the time that inflation was the main worry, which proved to be true. [Premier of the day] Zhu Rongji had to step in to curb the surge.

'The economic upheavals, China's market opening up and corporate governance were our main points of focus, and I believe we were shining a light on Hong Kong's corporate sector, in a way that caused some embarrassment to some people, but that certainly created more fairness for the shareholder and investor.'