Chen Yiting: The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has been thinking about how to increase the amount of financing in the primary market and the transaction volume in the secondary market
The Zhitong Finance App learned that Chen Yiting, CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (00388), said on a radio program that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has been thinking about how to increase the amount of financing in the primary market and the daily turnover of the secondary market. She pointed out that one of the important issues in line with the country's “15th Five-Year Plan” is to consolidate and enhance Hong Kong's status as an international financial center. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange plays an important role in this, and it is incumbent upon it to make more contributions. Chen Yiting believes that global investors have refocused their sights on Asia, especially the Chinese market, and believes that they must invest in China. These investors want to diversify their asset allocation rather than just investing in stocks, so Hong Kong needs to build a diversified asset ecosystem covering stocks, fixed income, currencies, commodities, etc.
In terms of the primary market, Chen Yiting mentioned that Hong Kong's IPO capital had returned to the top position in the world last year. A total of 119 IPOs were listed in 2025, with a total capital raised of HK$286.9 billion, an increase of 226% over the previous year. She believes that Hong Kong must continuously improve its listing framework because national development has given birth to various types of enterprises, and different enterprises have different financing needs. For example, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and new energy companies all need to invest a lot of resources in research and development.
To this end, Hong Kong has recently enacted special listing provisions for relevant companies, including Chapter 18A of the Listing Rules for biotech companies and Chapter 18C for specialty technology companies. She described the results as immediate and very popular in the market. In 2025, a total of 21 companies were listed under the Chapter 18 series.
In terms of the secondary market, Chen Yiting said that it will continue to improve the liquidity of the stock market. In recent years, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has optimized each trading unit and implemented trading price spread reforms.
The average daily turnover of the securities market increased from about HK$130 billion in 2024 to around HK$250 billion last year, and has risen to over HK$280 billion so far this year. She believes the situation is encouraging.
On commodities, Chen Yiting pointed out that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange recently re-launched dollar-denominated gold futures. She described the enthusiastic response from investors and said that the launch of renminbi-denominated gold futures has been included in the scope of consideration.
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange announced earlier this year that from July 6 to June 30, 2027, it will waive full market trading fees for US dollar gold futures and launch a preferential program for liquidity providers and active traders. This is the fourth time since 1980 that Hong Kong has introduced gold futures. In the 2017 round, offshore RMB and US dollar dual-currency contracts were launched simultaneously, but this did not continue due to poor trading.
Furthermore, Chen Yiting mentioned that the number of warehouses approved by the London Metal Exchange (LME) in Hong Kong has now exceeded 10, but this is still insufficient. She said during LME Asia Week in May of this year that the number of LME warehouses in Hong Kong has increased to 15, a significant increase from 4 a year ago, and the storage capacity is close to saturation.