Hong kong market economy

Bloomberg filepix for illustration purpose only - A + A HONG KONG (June 30): In 1996, the year before Hong Kong’s historic return to Chinese rule, two property tycoons from the British colony — Lee Shau Kee and Li Ka-shing — broke into the list of the world’s top 10 richest people for the first time. A quarter century later, that exclusive club no longer features anyone from the city, showing how the territory has failed to keep up with creating wealth. Despite being touted as one of the world’s freest markets, Hong Kong has barely seen any new homegrown billionaires reach the world’s top 500 in the past 25 years, barring a handful, including a son of Li’s and some mainland entrepreneurs with local citizenship running businesses outside Hong Kong. The reason, in part, is due to the special role real estate has continued to play in Hong Kong’s US$368 billion economy. Under a colonial-era policy, the government for decades has relied heavily on land auctions to … [Read more...] about Hong Kong’s broken billionaire factory shows city losing step

Amid the bitter US.-China trade war, a largely unnoticed development is the attempt by big U.S banks to compete in China's rapidly-growing financial sector. China recently announced specific dates when it will begin allowing full foreign ownership of mainland-based financial services companies. The China Securities Regulatory Commission said foreign ownership controls on futures firms, fund management firms and securities firms will be scrapped next year on January 1, April 1 and December 1, respectively. “China is very determined to reform its financial markets and knows that without the major American players, it is very hard to talk about having a truly internationalized market,” observes Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, per a detailed report in Bloomberg . “It also makes sense for China to accommodate a very important source of lobbying support, especially as there’s so little in the U.S. right now," he added. … [Read more...] about Big Banks Rushing for Piece of $43 Trillion China Market Amid Trade War

- A + A SHANGHAI (June 30): Chinese stocks marked their best month in nearly two years on Thursday (June 30), supported by signs of an economic recovery after the easing of Covid-19 restrictions. However, in Hong Kong, the benchmark Hang Seng Index slipped 0.62% to 21,859.79 points at the close, while Chinese H-shares listed in Hong Kong edged down 0.36% to 7,666.88 points. By the end of the session, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.1% to 3,398.62 points, while the blue-chip CSI 300 Index gained 1.44% to 4,485.01 points. Both indicesrecorded their biggest monthly gains since July 2020. Gains across the board came as official data showed that China's factory and service sectors snapped three months of activity decline in June as authorities lifted a strict Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai, reviving output and consumer spending. China's central bank needs to keep cuts to interest rates and banks' reserve requirement ratio among its policy options while waiting for … [Read more...] about China stocks log best month in two years on recovery hopes, easing Covid-19 curbs

- A + A (June 30): It was an unusually frigid December weekend when Cheng Wei summoned his inner circle to his Beijing office. The founder of Didi Global Inc, dressed entirely in black, told his lieutenants to slash spending by a fifth in 2022 and begin layoffs after staff return from Lunar New Year vacations. He delivered his bombshell flanked by a giant Powerpoint slide that read: “Don’t live with illusions. Face reality.” “We had a tough year,” said the reserved billionaire known as Will, who that day seemed even gloomier than normal, according to people briefed on the gathering. “But next year will be even tougher.” That sombre gathering encapsulated what many in the room already suspected — the ride-hailing champion once feted for running Uber Technologies Inc out of China was no more. In its place was a defeated shell worth a fifth of its value at the peak, bleeding users, blocked from raising funds for cherished projects — and whose executives were constantly … [Read more...] about Inside Didi’s US$60b crash that changed China tech forever

- A + A BEIJING (June 30): It’s official: Chinese equities are once again in vogue, after months of regulatory crackdowns, deleveraging and stringent virus curbs wiped trillions of dollars off benchmark gauges. A Bloomberg survey of 19 fund managers and analysts predicts that benchmark stock indexes in China and Hong Kong will post gains of at least 4% by year-end to outperform their global peers. About 70% of those polled plan to maintain or boost holdings of shares in the mainland and the financial hub in the next three months. The optimism marks a stunning reversal from March when investors raced to trim exposure to Chinese assets on fears that the nation’s Covid lockdowns and the war in Ukraine would damp economic growth. A recent easing of virus restrictions has propelled the CSI 300 Index to the brink of a bull market, and a loose policy stance has helped local equities defy the recent selloff in global stocks. “Covid restrictions will gradually ease and … [Read more...] about China’s world-beating stock rally is forecast to strengthen more

- A + A KUALA LUMPUR (July 1): Malaysia, like most Asian markets, did not escape the stock equity rout in the first half of this year that was fuelled by the global tightening sparked by an aggressive US Federal Reserve and Ukraine-Russian war. The FBM KLCI dropped 7.4% year to date — more so than the YTD period in 2020, when the pandemic struck and the benchmark index fell 5.53%. On June 29 — the cut-off date for data generated for this article — the stock closed at 1,451.48, as it hovered around the lowest levels seen since May 2020. Just last week, it skidded to as low as 1431.1 on June 22. Still, it isn't the most affected among its regional peers. That spot was occupied by South Korea, where the Kospi fell 20.14%, weighed by a sharp decline in semiconductor stocks. It was followed by Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh Stock Index (-18.70%), the Taiwan Capitalization Weighted Stock Index (-16.35%), the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index … [Read more...] about The biggest losers and gainers on Bursa Malaysia in 1H