Mainland e-commerce giant Alibaba’s dual-share structure may be controversial, but its US trading figures show it hasn’t discouraged investors from buying it.
While many fund managers have urged Hong Kong’s regulators not to change local listing rules to allow such structures, they haven’t stopped buying the stock.
Money is money, after all.
Alibaba’s stock turnover last Wednesday, when its six-month lock-up period expired, was 34.66 million shares, more than double its average trading volume of 16.30 million shares.
It makes sense for the city’s Securities and Futures Commission to list out the key conditions for allowing dual-share-structure listings
It has some way to go to catch up to another US-listed tech giant, Apple, whose daily trading volume is about 50 million to 60 million shares a day, but its average daily turnover of roughly US$1.39 billion equals almost 9 per cent of Hong Kong’s main board turnover on Friday.
That shows what a loss Alibaba’s listing in New York instead of Hong Kong has been to the local stock market in terms of turnover.