HKEX’s biotech chapter shows all the signs of a sustainable market

Two years in, the Hong Kong stock exchange’s biotech chapter is no longer an experiment, but a maturing equity market with all the hallmarks to suggest it can sustainably support innovative companies -- as long as follow-on capital becomes routinely available.

The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd. (HKEX) launched Chapter 18A, commonly referred to as the biotech chapter, in the spring of 2018. The hope was that the new listing mechanism would fill a much-needed void in the region for pre-revenue companies that had previously been prevented from listing on equity markets due to revenue and profit thresholds (see “Hong Kong’s New Chapter”). ...