Capital Markets

Several Chinese bubble-tea makers are looking at Hong Kong IPOs. When high-end tea maker Nayuki listed three years ago the market drank it up, but the deal now trades 90% below its listing price. Can a new group of issuers revive the market?

China’s Project Whitelist, launched at the start of the year, exists to ensure bank funding for property development. But it is there to protect projects, not the developers behind them.

Encumbered by an impotent fiscal policy and a sluggish stock market, bank lending could be China’s only route to economic recovery.

As Japan puts an end to the global negative interest rate era, its central bank's QE programme remains in place and may be a model for peers. Investors maintain a bullish outlook on the stock market.

Stock market reform has not only revitalized the country's capital markets but has also permeated the real economy. Countries like Korea are quickly following suit. Interestingly, China also seems to be drawing inspiration.

In the wake of heavy losses and mis-selling to retail investors, there is an urgent need for an overhaul of risk management in the banking sector.

The Sino-Swiss corridor, set up to encourage Chinese firms to sell global depositary receipts to international investors in the European state, took off fast in 2022. But a host of challenges, from Chinese regulatory concerns to an apparent lack of global interest, has stalled its progress.

While the world’s biggest markets are still preparing for T+1 settlement, talk is growing of the next step – but going any faster would mean a total reworking of how markets function.

It is not hard to find short-term worries over global markets’ state of readiness for the US’s transition to one-day settlement in late May. But even if the UK, Europe and those Asian markets still using two-day settlement can adapt to the shift in the longer term, they will also face intense pressure to lessen their dislocation from the US cycle by copying its move. Many also fear the ultimate end-game of same-day or even instant settlement.