The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) jointly announced today (Thursday) a comprehensive streamlining of: (1) the admission procedures for Exchange Participants (EPs); and (2) the registration and approval procedures for their staff members and substantial shareholders, effective 20 June 2008 (tomorrow).
The changes will reduce significantly EPs’ workload in submitting documents to the SFC and HKEx and eliminate duplicate efforts of the SFC and HKEx in relation to regulation of EPs. It is estimated that with these changes about 5,000 documents will no longer have to be submitted by EPs to HKEx each year.
The SFC is the statutory regulator responsible for licensing securities and derivatives market intermediaries. In addition, substantial shareholders and persons carrying out regulated activities for a licensed corporation must be approved by the SFC. The new arrangement including the following changes will take effect tomorrow.
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Any substantial shareholder of an EP approved by the SFC will be automatically registered by the Exchange as a Substantial Shareholder of the EP thus eliminating a separate application to and approval by HKEx.
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All licensed representatives of an EP who have been approved by the SFC under the Securities and Futures Ordinance as responsible officers in relation to Type 1 and 2 regulated activities will be automatically registered with the Exchange as Responsible Officers, again eliminating a separate application to and approval by HKEx.
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EPs’ employees using the trading devices of HKEx such as Trading Terminals, Multi-Workstation Systems, Open Gateways, Click Workstations and OMnet Application Programming Interfaces, or OAPIs, will no longer need to be registered with the Exchange. The related registration fees will also be eliminated.
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“The changes will streamline the operations of HKEx and Exchange Participants. They will also make the procedure more environmental-friendly by reducing the paper work involved,” said the SFC Chief Executive Officer Martin Wheatley.
“This demonstrates the commitment of the SFC and HKEx in providing a quality operating environment for the securities and derivatives markets in Hong Kong,” HKEx Chief Executive Paul Chow said. “Our streamlining efforts should benefit all market participants.”