Here comes December again. For armies of investment bankers (well, at least those unlucky enough not to be on a guaranteed package, for whom the guessing game has long been over), this is the long-awaited, immutable sign that bonus season is just around the corner. read
Last week, Hong Kong’s plans to play host to IPOs of international behemoths such as Saudi Aramco took a serious hit, amid news that both Glencore and Tapestry, the owner of luxury fashion brand Coach, would delist from the local exchange. read
The reason why HKEX now proposes to introduce changes to the way some primary equity offerings are conducted is, it says, “to address recent concerns about certain share issuance transactions that might not afford a fair treatment of shareholders, or an orderly market for securities trading”.
Over the summer, the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX) released a fascinating, but little noticed, survey detailing cash trading on its two listing platforms, the Main Board and GEM. The survey also included southbound trading undertaken through the Shanghai-Hong Kong and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect schemes, launched in 2014 and December 2016, respectively. read
Over the last three years, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) returned six applications for potential IPOs on the main board to their sponsors, effectively in each case freezing the listing process for at least eight weeks. The latest occurrence was in early June this year. read
Something quite extraordinary has just been happening in Singapore. For the first time in several years, investors in the city-state have been able to punt on a local, multi-billion-dollar IPO. read
Just as the country’s prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, met with Donald Trump on a US tour, Vietnam’s equity capital markets were repeatedly in the news over the last few weeks, with a flurry of IPOs and new listings, heralding that issuers there may finally be coming of age. read
Last month, in the wake of the appointment of Hong Kong’s new leader, the city’s securities regulator, the Securities & Futures Commission, issued a statement on the listing of infrastructure project companies, particularly in relation to the Belt and Road initiative. read
To many, the 85% collapse in the share price of China Huishan Dairy Holdings Co on March 24 came as a complete surprise. With now all of the company’s non-executive directors having tendered their resignations (in the process also effectively wiping out Huishan’s audit committee), the company’s key treasury executive still missing, and the controlling shareholder seemingly heading for the exit amid talk of margin calls, the milk producer’s short stint as a public company increasingly looks like a horror story. read
The CEO of HKEX may be keen for Saudi Aramco to list in Hong Kong but as I explain, there are more reasons for the Saudi oil giant to bypass the city’s exchange than to pick it for a listing. read
