Successfully closing IPOs is challenging in these tricky markets. Hong Kong has had its fair share of new listings pulled, delayed or altogether indefinitely postponed over the last year or so. The Securities and Futures Commission’s response has been to turn the screws on new issue sponsors and, now, on auditors.

Amid an 85% year-on-year decline in global IPO volumes, clean energy firm Huadian Fuxin is set to price an initial public offering of up to US$389 million equivalent (including a 15% over-allotment option) on June 20. As a concession to current volatility, the deal was cut from an original US$1 billion.

Graff Diamonds, a high-end jeweller, was supposed to have turned around Hong Kong’s moribund IPO market. It was not to be. Instead the company pulled its US$1 billion-equivalent listing on 30 May, piling more disappointment on an already massively downbeat market plagued by serial deal cancellations. What went wrong?

Inner Mongolia Yitai Coal (which is quite a bit of a mouthful) has started investor education for its IPO of up to US$1.5 billion equivalent in Hong Kong. If successful, it would become the first B-share entity to list there.