“In a number of years over the past decade, Hong Kong has been the largest market in the world in terms of new IPO funds raised,” says Charlton. “And it’s usually been in the top three over the past 10 years prior to the last couple of years – however, last year it was about sixth. The particular sector, which has slowed quite dramatically since 2020, has been the smaller market cap area. Partly this has been due to the draining of liquidity out of the Hong Kong market – Hong Kong regulators and government have been looking at ways to address that. But in the small to medium cap sector, a factor was definitely Hong Kong’s onerous regulations in this area – GEM, HKEX’s second board, has seen no IPOs for three years.”
One significant area of interest for Charlton was the growing connection between Hong Kong and Canadian markets.
“Why would Hong Kong and perhaps China and Asian companies…
