I feel that whilst completing this assignment, it would probably be easier for me to simply have surgery to attach my accounting dictionary to my hand because it has been so crucial to me surviving this course so far. From reading the annual reports, deciphering interviews with stock exchange moguls, "reading" financial statements and so on, I have come to realise that my knowledge of accounting lingo left a lot to be desired. But because of this challenge, it has forced to me expand my knowledge of accounting terms and I feel that now when I’m reading through text about Hong Kong Exchange, I can actually understand them.

 <--- How I feel reading HKEx reports!

I’ve been trying to expand my understanding of the achievements that HKEx had during 2014, as it seems like it was quite a pivotal year for them. I have read through the HKEx Annual Report 2014

 several times now and have pinpointed several reasons as to why they were so successful this year with their achievements.

The global financial environment in 2014 continued to be a very challenging one, however HKEx still managed to make a profit with their markets still performing well. The best example of this is with their IPO (Initial Product Offering) performance that was ranked 2nd in the world and showed an increase of 38% from 2013 for the company. This gave them $232.5 billion of equity funds, which was largely due to the 122 companies, which were newly listed on their market.

In comparison to this, the ADT (Average Daily Turnover) for the secondary market grew by only 11% from 2013, which was initially surprising considering their implementation of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect. It did only start in November, but I think because it was so widely spoken about for so many months, years even, that I expected the results to blow them out of the water for 2014. This 11% increase is a positive sign for the future, considering the ADT for the whole year was $69.5 billion which was already an increase, it’s very exciting to see that once the Stock Connect was fully active, the third and fourth quarters of the year showed ADT of $70.9 and $80.7 billion respectively. Hopefully we will see these results continue into the new financial year for HKEx.

In conjunction with the results of the Stock Connect, we also saw many other initiatives taken by the company that contributed to their positive results.

These are just a few of them:

·     Launched market data exchange programme with SSE 
(Shanghai Stock Exchange)

·     Introduced market data promotion programmes to support Southbound Trading 


·     Launched MMDH (Mainland Market Data Hub
) in Shanghai 


·     Introduced 10 new stock option classes 


·     Expanded Primary Market Maker programme to a total of 17 stock option classes 


·     Strengthened cooperation with professional associations in Hong Kong through LME training and 
briefings on new commodities products 


These are some examples of achievements that HKEx had in 2014 that cover all areas of the company including the cash, equity, derivatives and commodities segments.

Although HKEx didn’t show a spectacular profit in 2014, they have put in the foundations for some very successful years to come if all goes to plan!!