Following its news release issued on 7 July 2006 relating to the new model for information submission and dissemination for listed issuers, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) announces termination of its practice of posting listed issuers’ short-form preliminary results announcements (Summary Forms) on its trading and news dissemination systems with effect from 1 December 2006. 

The Summary Forms are currently posted on the HKEx or GEM website* and released on the company news information pages of HKEx’s securities market trading system, AMS/3 (Third Generation Automatic Order Matching and Execution System), and to subscribers on other HKEx information feed systems including the Market Datafeed (MDF) Service, Issuer Information feed Service and the Electronic Mailing Stock Information Service.   

Under the revised arrangement:

HKEx will publish a short message on the company news information pages of AMS/3 and the MDF Service to inform users when a Results Announcement has been posted on one of its websites.

“The revised arrangement will benefit shareholders and the investing public as the Results Announcements should provide more complete and meaningful information for shareholders and investors, and they will help to promote the trading of securities in a fair, orderly and informed market.  Listed issuers will benefit through elimination of the duplicative requirement to submit a summary of their results on the Summary Form, in addition to the Results Announcement,” Richard Williams, HKEx’s Head of Listing, said.

The Summary Form was introduced a number of years ago to facilitate quicker dissemination of financial results of listed issuers through the Stock Exchange’s trading and news dissemination systems.  With the posting now of all listed issuers’ announcements on its websites, HKEx believes that the market can be best served by the timely posting of the Results Announcements on its websites.

The revised arrangement was first discussed in HKEx’s Exposure Paper - Abolition of Requirement for Main Board Issuers to Publish Paid Announcements in Newspapers and Related Matters (the NPA Initiative) published in November 2005 and proposed to commence upon commencement of the Phase 1 of the NPA Initiative.  Currently HKEx proposes to make an announcement concerning commencement in early January 2007 with a tentative commencement date of 16 April 2007.  Having carefully looked into the operational implications, HKEx considers it feasible and desirable to proceed with the abolition of the Summary Form commencing from 1 December 2006 and to decouple this aspect of the initiative from the overall plan to abolish the requirement for paid announcements in newspapers.     

HKEx issued a letter today (Monday) to all listed issuers to give details of the revised arrangement.  HKEx’s letter to listed issuers about the revised arrangement is at: http://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/rulesreg/listrules/listletter/Documents/20061023.pdf.  The 7 July 2006 news release mentioned above is at: http://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/newsconsul/hkexnews/2006/060707news.htm.