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Hong Kong is considering additional measures to bolster the stock market which has been under pressure from China’s economic slowdown and geopolitical tensions, said the city’s leader John Lee at the inaugural HSBC Global Investment Summit on Monday .
Li said a host of measures had already been taken, including improving the listing regime for specialised technology companies, to enhance competitiveness.
“We are pleased that we’re considering additional measures from improving the transaction mechanism to boosting investment services and stepping up market promotion,” he said, without providing details.
The measures will help Hong Kong bounce back, and “as the measures take hold, and the macro environment improves, so too will be the sustainable development of the stock market – of that I have no doubt,” he said.
The median time for approving listing applications on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was reduced from 70 business days in 2022 to 48 business days in 2023 and that there is still room for further cutting IPO approval time, said Bonnie Chan, CEO of the HKEX,
The amount of time taken for stock listing approval also depended on the quality of the issuers’ answers to questions and the completeness of documents and the exchange spends 60% of its time waiting for the applicant to answer questions or submit documents, and she believed that the issuer’s cooperation is necessary to speed up the listing process, said Katherine Ng, Head of Listing at HKEX.
In addition, Chan revealed that some companies in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have shown interest in a secondary listing in Hong Kong, adding that that whether enterprises would come to invest in Hong Kong depended on whether the relevant costs would be worthwhile.