Reshaping the stock market to accommodate chinese business giants: the reintroduction of weighted voting shares in hong kong

In April 2018, the Hong Kong stock market reintroduced weighted voting shares (WVSs) to enhance its attractiveness primarily to Chinese issuers. By the end of 2021, however, only six Chinese issuers had used WVSs in their initial public offerings (IPOs) in Hong Kong. Based mainly on empirical and comparative analyses, this article attributes Chinese issuers' sparse use of WVSs to the highly restrictive ex-ante regulatory strategies employed in Hong Kong, which are purposefully designed to ring-fence target issuers to business giants as a trade-off between market openness and investor protection. Besides, reintroducing WVSs has helped the Hong Kong stock market to accommodate certain Chinese business giants' secondary listings. Although China has intro-duced WVSs to provide domestic issuers with a new landing zone, this article argues that there is no need or basis for Hong Kong to relax the ex-ante regu-lation of WVSs.