The quality of Hong Kong's IPO filings draws attention to UBS: regulation is meant to be a “reminder” rather than a “warning”

The Zhitong Finance App learned that under the recovery trend of the Hong Kong stock IPO market, the issue of the quality of IPO declarations has also attracted great attention from the supervisory authorities. According to reports, the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange jointly sent a letter to the IPO sponsor last Friday to express clear concerns about the decline in quality and some irregularities in recent new listing applications. In response, Li Zhenguo, vice chairman of UBS's Global Investment Banking Department and co-head of the Asian Corporate Client Division, explained that the move was more of a reminder from regulators than a “warning” as the market called it.

He pointed out that at present, more than 300 companies have submitted listing applications, and the supervisory authorities hope that at a time when business is busy, all parties in the market can still ensure the overall quality of the listing and avoid perfunctory or lowered standards.

Li Zhenguo said that in order to cope with the expected surge in listed projects, UBS has increased manpower and allocated internal resources in the past year to fully cooperate with the smooth progress of the IPO project.

He mentioned that the capital raised in the Hong Kong stock IPO market this year has reached 2.1 times the total amount of capital raised for the full year of 2024, and it is expected that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will regain the number one IPO financing scale in 2025. It is expected that next year's IPO capital raised will exceed HK$300 billion.