The firm noted that Hong Kong is set to see around HK$102.1 billion raised from 40 IPOs between January and June, which represents a 33 percent increase year on year in terms of number of deals and six to seven times more in terms of size.
The strong performance was boosted by four mega A+H listings, including that of battery giant CATL, which raised HK$41 billion, as well as a H-share listing by bubble tea chain Mixue that raised HK$444 million.
Deloitte now predicts the city will raise more than HK$200 billion from 80 listings this year – taking into consideration that almost 200 listing applications are currently in the pipeline, with five of them expected to raise at least HK$7.8 billion each.
That’s notably higher compared with its December forecasts of between HK$130 billion and HK$150 billion this year.
The managing partner of Deloitte China’s southern region, Edward Au, said the firm is “cautiously optimistic” that the city could maintain its top spot throughout the year – if there are no adverse geopolitical or macroeconomic disruptions at a time when the local bourse is continuing to woo global capital with reforms.
“What Hong Kong needs to do is on liquidity, how to continue to attract investors to Hong Kong, and secondly, to connect with the other exchanges, for example, in Asean and the Middle East, to facilitate secondary listings in Hong Kong,” he said.
“The local bourse operator should also continue to upgrade its existing listing regime, to see if some of the listing rules and thresholds could be improved,” he said.
Most of the new IPO heavyweights will come from the technology, media and telecommunications, consumer as well as medical and life sciences industries, Au added.
