Huatai International takes the Euromoney award for best securities house in Hong Kong for 2024, thanks not just to its prowess across asset classes but also its ability to seamlessly collaborate with its onshore Chinese parent, Huatai United Securities, to execute deals and gain clients.
As a result, revenues at Huatai International grew 36% year-on-year to HK$6.85 billion ($878.1 million) in the first half of 2023, while return on equity stayed a healthy 7%.
The firm’s reach is wide, with its investment banking operations spanning fixed income, currency and commodities, equities, wealth management and asset management. On debt capital markets, Huatai International worked on deals for both seasoned and repeat issuers, as well first-time issuers making their bond market debut. In both instances, its clients – which included big names such as Industrial Bank of China and CICC Hong Kong as well as others like the Suzhou and Hangzhou financing vehicles – saw success.
On ECM, it executed a number of Hong Kong IPOs, as well as facilitated the sale of global depositary receipts of Chinese issuers on the London or Switzerland stock markets.
An important differentiator is that Huatai is keen to broaden its reach further. In 2023, it set up a subsidiary with a capital markets licence in Singapore, expanded in Japan to help remotely lead deals on the Pro-Bond market and became a trading participant on the Luxembourg stock exchange.
It has also leveraged technology to spruce up its FICC trading platforms and launched an app exclusively focused on institutional investors. Additionally, its Zhangle Global online wealth management platform had been downloaded about 2 million times by the end of September 2023, making Huatai one of the leading securities houses in Hong Kong with the highest client growth rate.
Huatai’s research team is another success factor. The 100-plus team publishes reports on everything from the core economy and macro factors to country and sector reports – all of which bring some unique perspectives to clients.