Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) today (Monday) announced the following measures to give investors more timely access to free market data and encourage wider dissemination of issuer news:

	Shortening of the delays for delayed market data from the securities market from 60 minutes to 15 minutes and from the derivatives market from 30 minutes to 15 minutes from 2 April 2007;
	Enhancement of the email and short message service, or SMS, news alert services of the Investment Service Centre on the HKEx website from early April 2007; and
	Reduction of Issuer Information feed Service (IIS) standard fee on information vendors from $96,000 to $45,000 per quarter from 1 June 2007.

Shortening of the delays for delayed market data

HKEx will shorten the delays for its delayed market data, effective 2 April 2007, to 15 minutes from the current 60 minutes for securities market data and 30 minutes for derivatives market data.  After the change:

	Information vendors will be allowed to redistribute delayed data to their subscribers with a delay of only 15 minutes; and
	The delayed market data available on the HKEx website for free will have delays of only 15 minutes.

Information vendors redistributing delayed derivatives market data are already subject to a flat fee of $5,000 a month.  That fee will remain unchanged notwithstanding the shortening of the delay time.  Separately, information vendors only licensed for delayed securities market data will simply need to pay another flat fee of $5,000 a month; no fee at the subscriber level will be levied by HKEx.  To allow information vendors of securities market data adequate time to adjust, HKEx is waiving the flat fee for delayed securities market data until January 2008.  

Enhancement of issuer news alert service

To provide better service to investors, HKEx is upgrading the email/SMS news alert service available through the Investors Service Centre, the most popular section of the HKEx website, by doubling the maximum number of companies per subscription from 10 to 20.  Subscribers of the service will receive alerts from HKEx by email and/or SMS when there is document from one of their designated listed companies published on the HKEx website.  Similar alerts will also be issued when a disclosure of interests notice relating to the designated listed companies is published on the HKEx website.

HKEx is also halving the interval of issuing the alerts from one hour to 30 minutes. 

The enhanced features are expected to be rolled out in early April 2007.

Reduction of IIS Fees

HKEx will reduce the standard fee for IIS, the datafeed service it uses to transmit issuer disclosures electronically on a real-time basis to the market via licensed information vendors, by more than 50 per cent.  Issuer documents disseminated via IIS include, inter alia, announcements and notices, circulars, annual reports, prospectuses for initial public offerings (IPOs), IPO allotment results, company information sheets from the Growth Enterprise Market.

From 1 June 2007,the standard fee will be reduced from $96,000 per quarter to $45,000 per quarter for full IIS service, which comprises all issuer documents displayed on the HKEx web, and dual live connections.  The standard fee allows information vendors to redistribute the issuer documents on IIS to an unlimited number of users.  The port connection fee will remain unchanged at $24,000 per annum.

“These initiatives are part of HKEx’s continuing efforts to provide better quality services to investors and strengthen its relationships with business partners,” said Bryan Chan, Head of Information Services. 

“The new delayed data policy is aimed at increasing the visibility of HKEx’s markets and enhancing the reference value of the delayed data to investors and other users," Mr Chan added.  “The issuer news alert service will help investors keep track of the latest disclosures made by their designated listed companies.  We believe the service upgrade will be welcomed by the market.  We also hope the reduction in the IIS fee will bring about higher accessibility and availability of real-time issuer information for our investors.”