With a view to attracting well-established high growth companies from emerging and innovative sectors to list on the main board, The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (HKSE) has released, for consultation purpose, proposed new rules (the "Proposal") to facilitate:
- listing of pre-revenue biotech companies;
- listing of companies with weighted voting rights; and
- secondary listing of issuers primary listed on The New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq Stock Market or the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange (each a "Qualifying Exchange").
As the Proposal closely follows HKSE's earlier paper on the subject (see our Legal Update of 20 December 2017), it is expected that the three new chapters of the Main Board Listing Rules (the "Listing Rules"), namely Chapter 8A (Weighted Voting Rights), Chapter 18A (Biotech Companies) and Chapter 19C (Secondary Listings of Qualifying Issuers), will come into effect in second quarter of 2018. The public comment period will officially end on 23 March 2018.
This first article summarises the proposed new rules on listing of companies with weighted voting rights. We will discuss in our next article the changes in connection with the listing of pre-revenue biotech companies and the new secondary listing concessionary route.
