|  | | 2012 News and Press Releases | | |
HEADLINE NEWS:
Hong Kong Regulator Defends Tougher I.P.O. Proposals
Neil Gough
The New York Times DealBook. May 22, 2012
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EXCERPT: Hong Kong’s top securities regulator on Tuesday defended new proposals that could subject bankers to civil or criminal prosecution over misleading statements in documents of companies they bring public. “We are not on a mission to put bankers in jail,” Ashley Alder, chief executive of the Securities and Futures Commission, told a roomful of bankers, lawyers, accountants and financial journalists at Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club. “At base, the proposals are about how to assist the market to improve the quality of our I.P.O.’s.,” Mr. Alder said in his first public speech since the proposals were announced on May 9. “If we succeed in that goal, it can be measured by how infrequently we resort to enforcement action or criminal prosecution.”
Financial professionals in Hong Kong, the world’s biggest market for initial public offerings for the last three years, have closely watched the regulator’s proposals. They include a host of other measures that would increase the importance of due diligence before a stock market listing. The measures, which will be open to public comment until July 6, come on the heels of a series of accounting failures, fraud and other corporate scandals in both Hong Kong and the United States in recent years, mainly involving companies from mainland China. The United States and Singapore already hold banks that underwrite or sponsor I.P.O.’s criminally liable for false or misleading disclosures by the companies they help bring public. Hong Kong’s proposals could subject listing sponsors to multiyear jail terms and fines of as much as 1 million Hong Kong dollars (about $130,000).
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