The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), the territory's market regulator, bans naked short-selling, which prevents investors from shorting shares they do not already have access to. It also enforces the uptick rule, which restricts short-selling orders to stocks that are rising in value.
Citing these precautions, the SFC has resisted adopting the more comprehensive bans on short selling embraced by other regulators.
While praising Hong Kong's current regime as “robust and well balanced”, Risk Metrics argued in a new report that the SFC could improve transparency. It said that all short positions involving more than 1 per cent of a company's stock should be publicly disclosed.