Hong Kong investors with a conscience will be a key target of a new stock exchange set to launch this year linking capital with social enterprises.
A Singapore-based company, Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX), is building the platform and hopes to harness the growing trend of investors seeking a social return as well as a financial one.
It's managing director, Robert Kraybill, said that, while China had not traditionally been as big a market for social enterprises as other countries such as India, ' we think that's starting to change'.
'The [impact investing] trend is definitely gathering pace. If you went back 10 years or so, you would not see any of this so it probably started to pick up five years ago and, in the last couple of years, it's really gained steam.
'The idea behind creating a public exchange is that, by doing so, you can bring it to the next level of transparency and liquidity... and to a much wider group of investors: individual retail investors, mutual funds and a very broad group of institutional investors.'
Kraybill said the bourse would help social enterprises throughout Asia Pacific raise investment capital, particularly from investors who care about their social and environmental mission as well as about making a financial return.
'Right now, no one is doing this, so it would be a world first,' he said. 'When we went into this, our thinking was maybe a little na?ve. We later realised that we actually need to build and encourage the development of an ecosystem for impact investing.
