Resilient Margins For HKEx, with Early Signs of Trading Activity Bottoming Out
We expect Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing's, or HKEx's, strategy for the foreseeable future to focus on ensuring that it can continue to serve as the gateway between China and the rest of the world. HKEx currently enjoys an extraordinarily privileged position, in that it holds an effective monopoly on facilitating the movement of capital between the world’s second-largest economy and the rest of the world. Maintaining this position requires a balance between access to China while maintaining a degree of autonomy. However, China has steadily increased its influence over Hong Kong in recent years and Hong Kong has seen an outflow of some people, businesses, and capital. Counteracting this headwind has been HKEx’s increased expansion of the Connect program with the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, which is creating financial highways between Hong Kong and China.