But who are these companies, and should I be dumping my blue chips for red chips?
Given the huge sell-off after the GITIC collapse, some of the red chips now look cheap.
Yet even if red chips falter, Hong Kong's business scene will continue to redden.
Rumours that China will clamp down on red chips have prompted many investors to sell.
Students given canisters with red chips ate less than half the amount than those without red chips.
Of the 90 or so Red Chips, only about 10 meet stringent listing requirements outlined in the paper.
" Though he thinks some red chips are overvalued, Bhaskaran says, "The Hang Seng Index is ready to soar.
There are some B shares which are well worth looking at that also have lagged behind the red chips.
You have to look at two different markets, red chips and B shares.
Some analysts worry that Hong Kong and particularly the Hong Kong-based companies with strong connections to China, known as red chips, are overpriced.
Red Chips are Hong Kong-listed offshore subsidiaries of Chinese state-owned enterprises.
Several red chips conducted multibillion-dollar public stock offerings in recent years.
Punters are hoping the just-opened National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing (see story on page 30) will act to boost the economy and help red chips.
Still, 100 days before the territory's return to China, investors seem convinced that these red chips will somehow gain control of undervalued assets that can be transmuted into gold.
Investors, in their more rational moments, say the high price-earnings multiples of red chips, often two or three times those of blue chips, are justified by the prospects of economic growth on the mainland.
The deal is only the latest in a string of flotations - mostly in Hong Kong, where the "red chips" make up a significant proportion of the market - to raise money to modernise its economy.
Hong Kong Red Chips--shares of Chinese firms listed in Hong Kong, such as Citic Pacific or China Telecom, are treated separately from the rest of the Hong Kong market, because they tend to be more volatile and have different accounting standards.
As Jardine Fleming, a Hong Kong stockbroker, points out, the creation of red chips is merely a continuation of a trend that began in the early 1970s with a big increase in the number of listed companies controlled by Hong Kong Chinese families.
Moreover, it would be a welcomed development if all of China's ITICs and so-called "red-chips" in Hong Kong and on the mainland could, at long last, receive the kind of serious auditing that they have richly deserved, but never really received.
As a former mayor puts it, the city has gone from white pines to red tape to blue chips.
There was juice in Styrofoam cups and potato chips on little red plastic plates.
"What we found out was our cafeteria had actually been operating in the red even selling soda and potato chips hand over fist, " she said.
The chairs are covered in fake zebra fur and small wooden tables are set with red candles and bowls of stale potato chips.
The Yankees and Red Sox had the cash, the allure, the eight-figure contracts stacked like chips on green fabric.
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Women in skimpy red dresses prowled the conference floor with one startup's logo on their chests, soliciting chips.
He built the business into a colossus and himself into a multimillionaire with a bright red Ferrari, though for much of that time he was the unknown man eating egg and chips in the lorry park, with oily hands from all that cleaning.
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