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Year: 2016

The Juggernaut

Last week’s news was all about Goldman Sachs and Bank of America materially trimming their investment banking platforms in Asia, as margins for bulge bracket houses in the region have gradually eroded in the face of intense competition by Chinese brokers. read

, , China, Hong Kong, Syndicate

Cornerstone summer party

Readers of this column will be familiar with my occasional ranting about Hong Kong’s cornerstone investor regime, and in particular the doltish six-month lock-up rule which the Singapore Exchange, for one, never saw fit to introduce, and which even Bursa Malaysia ended up ditching, after having initially restricted it to subscriptions representing 5% or more of a company’s share capital. read

, , , , , Cornerstones, Hong Kong, Liquidity... +3 more

New thriller!

I am very pleased to announce the publication of my new thriller, “The Traveler” (a jihadist’s journey), which is now available to buy as a Kindle ebook on the Amazon.com website. read

Doing away with Hong Kong’s free float rule

On July 27, the HKEx announced that “it was minded to exercise its power” to cancel the listing of China Oriental Group within a period of six months, due to the company’s insufficient public float. This, however, was only the latest step in a rather long saga, which illustrates to a tee not only that the exchange’s minimum free float rule actually serves little purpose, but also how incredibly slowly the regulators can move to make decisions in the city, thereby hurting both institutional and retail investors. read

, , , , Free float, Hong Kong, IPO pipeline... +2 more

DKYC – Don’t Know Your Customer

One of the enduring mysteries of IPOs remains the all-elusive institutional investor allocation process. I once heard a hedge fund manager describe it as the method through which you can receive as many shares as you want, in deals that are sure to tank in the aftermarket, and, conversely, as few as possible, in hot, oversubscribed transactions that outperform after the start of trading. read

, , Allocations, Hong Kong, Institutonal demand