Hong Kong’s bourse operator has expanded its collaboration with two exchanges in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to pave the way for its companies to list here, as a government advisory body said it plans to examine Islamic finance to align the city’s financial infrastructure with the needs of the Middle East.
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) has added the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) and the Dubai Financial Market (DFM) as recognised stock exchanges, allowing companies listed on them to apply for a secondary listing in Hong Kong, it said in a statement on Friday.
The additions came after HKEX last year added the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul) as a recognised bourse and will allow more Middle East companies to consider listing in Hong Kong, said HKEX head of listing Katherine Ng.
“This expansion demonstrates HKEX’s continuous efforts to support companies in one of the world’s fastest growing regions to tap Hong Kong’s markets, home to a diverse Asian and global investor base,” Ng said in the statement.
Hong Kong’s became the first bourse to list a Saudi Arabian exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking 56 Middle East stocks in November. In May this year Bonnie Chan Yiting, the CEO of HKEX, said the first Middle East listing is only “a matter of time.”
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Separately, the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC), a government think tank that promotes the city as an international financial centre, said it will conduct more studies of Middle East markets and Islamic finance to facilitate Hong Kong’s new status as a “super connecter”.
The study of Islamic finance – which refers to investment strategies that are in line with the moral principles of Islam – will help the city to attract more fund flow and talent in the sector, Daniel Fung, vice-chairman of FSDC, said in a media briefing on Friday
FSDC has made more than 230 policy recommendations to the government since 2013, with of them 166 adopted.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu and regulators have toured Southeast Asia and Middle East countries many times over the past two years to promote links with Hong Kong.
Islamic finance has made significant progress to become a US$4.5 trillion market globally and is poised to grow by 11 per cent annually through 2030, according to Azman Mokhtar, chairman of the leadership council at the Malaysia International Islamic Finance Centre.
FSDC last year signed an agreement with the Financial Sector Development Program of Saudi Arabia.
“We can expect more funds from Saudi Arabia to allocate in Hong Kong ,” said Andrew Wier, another vice-chairman of the FSDC, who is also regional senior partner at KPMG in Hong Kong. “We need to give a space for cooperations in the next few years.”
Besides that agreement, FSDC chairman Laurence Li Lu-jen, who is a senior counsel, said there would be many joint projects to maintain the connections between Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, which in turn will enhance Hong Kong’s role as a connector.
“Hong Kong will evolve from a bridge to a supper connecter of all sides between the dual circulation and international circulation,” Li said.
Li said the FSDC will be looking at ways to reboot Hong Kong’s new listings, which have plummeted. This would include drawing on lessons from the experiences of London and New York to tailor the listing rules to attract more companies that could be from the biotech and information technology sectors.
The city, which was the world’s largest IPO market seven times between 2009 to 2019, has slipped several rungs to 13th place in a global ranking of IPO markets, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).
But Li said the tide has turned with the listing in June of artificial intelligence drug researcher QuantumPharm, the first company to list under Chapter 18C, a regime introduced more than a year ago for specialist technology firms to float their shares even if they are yet to generate any profit.
