March 22, 2018—Hongkong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) proudly presented the inaugural HKEX Biotech Summit, an event that connects key industry leaders with the investment community to share views on the latest biotech innovations and ways to finance this fast-growing sector. As conference sponsor, Jingtian & Gongcheng, with its positive outlook on the promising future of biotech industry funded by the capital markets, participated throughout the summit.
Around 600 guests and delegates attended the summit, which included senior executives from biotech firms and industry groups, as well as institutional investors, analysts and other market participants. Key themes for this year’s summit focused on the changing global biotech landscape, as well as recent advances in China’s biotech industry and the challenges that lie ahead.
Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan (Maobo) delivered the opening remarks at the summit, ” As one of the world’s leading financial capitals, and China’s international financial center, Hong Kong is indisputably well suited to meet the varying financial needs of biotech companies, whatever their size and whatever their stage of development. We certainly have the prime prerequisites for playing a hub role in biotech.” Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) Chairman Carlson Tang (Jiacheng) and SFC Chief Executive Officer Ashley Alder also addressed the conference along with biotech industry leaders.
The summit included lively panel discussion on the varying trends in Asia and China’s biotech development compared with those in the West, and the various options for fundraising in a sector that has deep capital needs as it pursues research and development. In particular, the biotech CEO panel discussion hosted by Xiaojia Li was humorous yet right on point.
HKEX has published a public consultation paper seeking public feedback on the proposed new rules to accommodate the listings of companies from emerging and innovative sectors, with a new chapter focusing on the listing of pre-revenue biotech issuers. The relevant consultation will end today (March 23). The Exchange expects the consultations to be issued in late April at the earliest, following which it hopes to start accepting formal listing applications under the new regime. There was also plenty of discussion at the summit about the new listing rules for biotech companies, each expressing his/her opinion from different angles. More thought-provoking issues and questions which deserve further discussion emerged at panel discussion, where speakers also expressed hopes and wishes for the execution of the new listing rules. If you need further inquiries in this respect, please don’t hesitate to contact Jingtian & Gongcheng.
