ENG-2017 — Page 104

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Financial and Monetary Affairs

LME and its prices are used as global benchmarks. The average daily volume for 2017 was 624,480 lots. The LME's in-house clearing house in London, LME Clear, supports the exchange's commodity business.

Enhancing Hong Kong's Competitiveness as International Financial Centre

Hong Kong strengthens its competitiveness as an international financial centre through both enhancing the regulatory framework and promoting market development. The city will capitalise on opportunities arising from the Belt and Road Initiative and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area to consolidate and enhance its position as a major platform of capital raising and financing for Mainland and overseas enterprises as well as a global hub for offshore RMB business.

Fund-raising Centre

In 2017, the SEHK ranked fourth worldwide in terms of the IPO equity funds raised, at $128 billion. It attracted 174 new listings, including 13 transfers of listing from the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) to the Main Board. Apart from Hong Kong and Mainland companies, 32 non-local companies, from Canada, Japan, Macao, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and the United States, are also listed on the SEHK. Newly listed companies are attracted by the market's liquidity and access to investors across Asia. The SEHK is working to accept more overseas jurisdictions as places of incorporation.

To facilitate listings of companies from emerging and innovative sectors, the SEHK announced in December that it would introduce two new chapters to the Main Board listing rules to allow the listings of pre-revenue biotechnology issuers and issuers from emerging and innovative sectors that had weighted voting rights structures, subject to additional disclosure and safeguards. The SEHK also proposed to modify existing listing rules about overseas companies to create a new concessionary secondary listing route that will attract eligible issuers from emerging and innovative sectors to list in Hong Kong.

Asset Management and Private Wealth Management

Fund domiciliation builds up Hong Kong's fund manufacturing capabilities by driving demand for professional services along the whole service chain, including fund management, investment advice, legal and accounting services, and sales and marketing. This allows the city to develop into an all-rounded asset management hub. At the end of 2016, the combined fund management business was valued at $18,293 billion, of which 66.3 per cent, excluding Reits, came from non-local investors, indicating that investors outside Hong Kong see the city as a preferred investment platform4. At the end of 2017, there were 2,205 SFC-authorised unit trusts and mutual funds, of which 755 were domiciled in Hong Kong, up 7.1 per cent from a year earlier and 147 per cent more than five years ago.

4 Figures are quoted from the SFC's annual Fund Management Activities Survey for 2016.

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These include 125 MPF pooled investment funds offered both as retail unit trusts and for MPF purposes.

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