ENG-2011 — Page 125

Financial and Monetary Affairs | 89

In the light of the volatile market conditions due to the European sovereign debt crisis in the second half of 2011 and as part of the ongoing strategies, the HKMA has been closely monitoring the funding and liquidity positions of foreign. Als, particularly those from Europe, including their access to the interbank market and deposit movements. These Als have also been asked to step up their contingent funding plans and to maintain sufficient high-quality liquefiable assets to meet any unexpected developments. In addition, the HKMA has stepped up its communication with the home supervisors of some European Als on matters concerning the latest financial conditions of their head offices and market developments.

The enhanced Deposit Protection Scheme providing a higher protection limit of $500,000 per depositor per bank came into operation on January 1, 2011. In addition to the increase in the protection limit, coverage of the scheme expanded to include deposits pledged as security for banking services. Measures to enhance the efficiency of the determination of compensation payments also became effective at the beginning of the year.

At the end of 2011, over 99.6 per cent of the 21 835 complaints on Lehman- related products had been dealt with. Investigation into the remaining 72 Lehman- related complaints was under way at the end of the year, with a majority of them received in 2011.

Securities and Futures Sector

Main Features

The securities market in Hong Kong is operated by the SEHK and the futures market by the Hong Kong Futures Exchange Limited (HKFE), both being wholly owned subsidiaries of the HKEX.

At the end of 2011, there were 1 496 companies listed on the Main Board and the Growth Enterprises Market (GEM) of the SEHK with a total market capitalisation of about $17,537 billion and total equity funds raised of $490 billion during the year. The total turnover of the securities market amounted to $17,154 billion. The total number of shares traded reached 39 907.3 billion, a record high.

The ETF market continued to expand in 2011. During the year, 20 new ETFs were authorised and the total number of ETFs listed on the SEHK increased to 77, offering a wide range of investment exposures to world, regional and Mainland indices and commodities for investors. According to the HKEX, turnover of ETFs reached $545.3 billion. To help investors better distinguish between synthetic ETFs and traditional ETFs, the SFC and the HKEX introduced measures to enhance disclosure related to synthetic ETFs listed on the SEHK during 2011. Managers of synthetic ETFs were required to put an asterisk and an annotation explaining the product is a synthetic ETF right after the name of a synthetic ETF in all public documents, marketing materials and websites. In addition, the alphabet 'X' must appear as a marker on the English and Chinese stock short names of synthetic ETFs. Furthermore, to strengthen protection for investors, additional measures