Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) has hired a veteran investment banker as managing director and head of global issuer services to lead its efforts in attracting overseas companies to go public on the city’s bourse, hoping for a rebound after a tepid first half.
Johnson Chui will take over the newly created role from September 2024 and lead the global issuer services teams based in Hong Kong, mainland China, London and Singapore. Chiu will report jointly to HKEX co-heads of markets Wilfred Yiu and Glenda So.
He will be assuming duties from Christina Bao, co-head of sales and marketing, who is leaving HKEX after eight years, per the company statement.
Chui joins from Nomura, where he was head of equity capital markets for Asia ex-Japan. Prior to Nomura, Chui spent nearly 18 years at Credit Suisse, where he held the same position for Asia Pacific. He has also held senior investment banking roles at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.
With the new hire, HKEX is looking to expand its base internationally when it comes to initial public offerings (IPOs), as a majority of its issuers are from China. As of July 2024, a total of 2,609 companies were listed on HKEX, with 1,447 of them from the mainland.
Some of the most notable overseas listings include Alibaba in 2019 and more recently Chinese multinational automobile manufacturer NIO in 2022 and Indonesian courier services company J&T Global Express in 2023.
There were 41 newly listed companies as of August 20, 2024, according to HKEX, compared with 39 in the same period last year. The year-over-year (YoY) increase of 5% indicates a slow recovery, but market sentiment largely remains positive expecting a strong bounce back in the second half of the year.
However, KPMG downgraded its forecast for Hong Kong’s IPO market in June, citing a global decline in dealmaking. It now expects up to 80 new listings that will raise a total of HK$60 billion ($7.7 billion) in 2024, almost half of its earlier estimate of HK$100 billion ($12.8 billion).
