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14.
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Mr. Martin Lee has questioned the power of the
General Committee of the Unified Exchange to suspend
trading. As a matter of principle, it is not for the
Government to comment on the legality of actions by a
private individual, or company, particularly when those
actions might be the subject of dispute. I understand, however, that the Exchange had taken legal advice on the
legality of its action.
SC
پلی
15.
Mr, David Li suggested that urgent legislation
should have been passed to enable the Government to order
the stock market to reopen. This is an astonishing
suggestion. As Mr. David Li must know, even had we put
together emergency legislation, the rescue package would
have had to form part of it. And even had we adopted Mr.
Li's suggested course of action, it is most unlikely that
the markets would have opened before the Monday in any
event.
16.
Our main objective after the markets closed was
to ensure that they reopened as quickly as possible and in
as normal a manner as possible. This is in accordance with
our prime policy objective, which is to maintain the
integrity of our securities markets. Some of the solutions
proposed, in particular by Mr. David Li, would have done
little either to enhance the reputation of Hong Kong or to
safeguard the interests of investors as a whole. I shall
return to his comments in a moment because so much of what
he has said illustrates the difficulties that we faced.
Li
le