Following is the transcript of remarks by the Financial Secretary, Mr Paul Chan, at a media session after attending the meeting of the Financial Leaders Forum this evening (November 28):

Reporter: Mr Chan, can you just tell us a bit about what was discussed today?

Financial Secretary: The Financial Leaders Forum discussed three matters today. The first one is about attracting new economy companies, innovation and technology companies, to come to Hong Kong for listing. The discussion also included companies with weighted voting structures. The discussion is very constructive, very specific and concrete, and basically adopted three principles in considering attracting these companies to come to Hong Kong for listing or for secondary listing.

     The first principle adopted is that perhaps we do not need to create a new board for these purposes, but instead in the listing rule set up a separate chapter. The second is when we attract these companies to Hong Kong for listing, particularly those with weighted voting rights, it is important to have appropriate safeguards to protect investors' interests and also to make sure the quality of our market will not be diminished. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange in consultation with the Securities and Futures Commission will devise the relevant rules and regulations for consultation with the market. The third principle is, in considering secondary listing, the threshold for those companies coming to Hong Kong for secondary listing will be the same as those applying for initial public offering (IPO), so that there will not be regulatory arbitrage. That is the first issue we have discussed.

     The second issue is to discuss a report made by the Financial Services Development Council (FSDC) back in 2014 about making Hong Kong the IPO platform of choice. The committee received the report from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the work so far in relation to the recommendations by the FSDC. The third paper we discussed is the paper from the Securities and Futures Commission, which is to talk about how to enhance Hong Kong's competitiveness in terms of our IPO regime, the Connect arrangements with the Mainland, risk management, asset management, etc.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Issued at HKT 21:48

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