White Collar | No need to shed any tears for the end of HK’s iconic trading hall
The 30-odd traders left active on the floor are from a bygone age – but it’s
understood HKEX is planning to find a much smaller venue in Central for them, where hopefully they can still keep their rent at an affordable level
The stock exchange’s decision to shutter its iconic trading hall shows technological evolution has managed to end a chapter in the 126-year history of the city’s stock market trading.
Now the question is, ‘what happens to our traders?’
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) on Monday informed brokers that its current 32-year-old trading hall will be no longer, from October, as it is seriously under used.
Most stockbrokers said they felt sad about the news, while some of the older hands probably reflecting back on the halcyon days of frenetic verbal and manual trading.
The trading hall as a venue is in the collective memories of anyone associated with the stock market, after the combination of the four former stock exchanges into Stock Exchange of Hong Kong in 1986.
When Hongkong Land Holdings built the Exchange Square complex in the early 1980s, the government commissioned it to build the trading hall for the combined exchange, called the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. The stock exchange later merged with the futures exchange, in 2000 to form the HKEX.
