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Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA)i

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) was established in April 1993 by merging the Office of the Exchange Fund with the Office of the Commissioner of Banking. The HKMA is responsible for maintaining monetary and banking stability, including maintaining currency stability within the framework of the Linked Exchange Rate system under which the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar.

 

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With the Fed expected to start cutting rates before the end of the year, margins for lenders will narrow, potentially exposing threats in other areas. Hong Kong’s banks have made provisions and shored up balance sheets to ward off China property risk

  • Plan offers reassurance about access to credit relief amid market rumours of loans being called early
  • Banking Association and banks including HSBC and Standard Chartered voice support for the measures

HSBC Gold Token, which will be available on the lender’s online banking and mobile app, is the first such retail product to be issued by a bank, according to HSBC, as the government pushes for more digital assets to be rolled out for public use.

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New home sales in Hong Kong stuttered slightly on Friday, with buyers giving a lukewarm response to Henderson Land Development’s latest project in Tai Kok Tsui.

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‘There are only a few [international financial centres], and Hong Kong is one of them. It is hard-won. We must not lose this place,’ CK Hutchison and CK Asset chairman says.

Hong Kong’s monetary authority cautioned borrowers to carefully assess interest-rate risks before buying property as it remains uncertain when the Fed will cut interest rates.

The HKMA has held its base rate at current level after raising it 11 times from March 2022 to July 2023 to the highest level since December 2007.

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Hong Kong’s Global Shipping Business Network has finished a prototype of its first electronic bill of lading in collaboration with Ant Group’s ZAN blockchain unit.

City’s biggest bank and start-up hub aim to build ‘international fintech corridor’ to further Hong Kong’s goal of being an international hub for such technology.

Chan says new or expanded firms, together with 30 companies that made similar moves last year, will invest more than HK$40 billion in the city and create 13,000 jobs.

The HKMA’s new wholesale central bank digital currency project aims to enhance interbank settlements for tokenised money. A planned sandbox will test settlement of tokenised real-world assets.

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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has launched the second phase of a pilot programme to explore ‘innovative’ uses for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for public use, five months after it unveiled the results of the first trial run.

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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority launched a plan to trial stablecoins, announced in December, for companies with a ‘genuine interest’ in fiat-backed crypto.

‘We’ve always been at the cutting edge of the whole blockchain evolution, including CBDCs,’ Yue, CEO of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s de facto central bank, tells the Post.

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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is testing an ecosystem that includes digital forms of deposits, blockchain-based financial products and central bank money for settlement purposes.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has advised banks to take extra care when lending to property speculators, in an indirect attempt to clamp down on asset flipping a week after the city abandoned decade-old curbs for the real estate industry.

Hong Kong’s largest developer by market capitalisation is being tipped by analysts to emerge as the ‘prime beneficiary’ of the city’s removal of all property cooling measures.

Hong Kong property sales dropped to a four-month low in February, but analysts expect the market will bounce back in the coming months after the government removed all market-cooling curbs this week.

‘It’s not just about addressing a global issue that might affect everybody, it’s also about protecting our people in our own land,’ Eddie Yue says.

Regulators from Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore welcome the trend of tokenisation as a means to promote efficiency, disintermediation, liquidity and financial inclusion in markets.

City leader John Lee is the only government official set to contribute extra to public coffers under finance chief’s plan to introduce two-tiered standard rates tax regime.

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Such guidance will make it ‘a lot easier for banks to figure out what to do and what not to do’, expert says at Climate Business Forum, although profusion of guidance may cause confusion in the short term.

The relaxation by the de facto central bank followed today’s move by Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po to abolish a wide swathe of decade-old curbs on the city’s housing sector.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is expanding its role as a banking supervisor by addressing the pain points faced by the industry when managing climate risk, including setting up an online risk assessment platform and training the workforce.

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HSBC, Standard Chartered and Hang Seng Bank are rolling out more products tied to the Wealth Management Connect scheme amid a drive by Beijing to boost the Greater Bay Area’s financial markets.

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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is preparing a transition finance framework to classify whether activities can help carbon-intensive firms reach net-zero emissions, to support the development of the city as an international green and sustainable finance hub.