Insurance companies in Hong Kong, for example, are reporting record results at the same time as the city's unemployment rate is rising.
The group now employs 14, 000 people nationwide and holds three listed companies in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, including Xiwang Sugar Holdings, Xiwang Foodstuffs and Xiwang Special Steel.
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Given the prevalence of similarly structured companies in Hong Kong, the case serves as a vivid illustration of just how vulnerable outsiders are to being squeezed by insiders.
In news involving other Chinese companies traded in Hong Kong, China Yurun Food rose by 3.7% after the company issued a statement denying rumors of financial problems.
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Companies based in Hong Kong went out of their way to associate themselves with Beijing and Shanghai, the two leading cities in China.
Shares in companies like Hong Kong-listed electronics supplier AAC Technologies have shot up by more than 80%, putting its boss Pan Zhengmin in a good position to return to soon-to-be-unveiled 2012 Forbes China Rich List.
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Weakness in Chinese companies helped the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong fall 0.9% to 22890.60.
Corporate governance rating systems covering all listed companies have been proposed in Hong Kong and the Philippines.
For their foreign real estate companies, like those in Hong Kong, the duo see NAV discounts close to 50%.
Mr. Wheatley, a Briton who spent 18 years at the London Stock Exchange before taking the Hong Kong post in 2005, said the problems with Chinese companies listing outside their home jurisdiction, including those that list in Hong Kong, were exacerbated by the fact that regulators seeking more information about a company rely on third-party investigators.
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By using the excess capacity of foreign telecommunications firms, callback companies can offer overseas calls in Hong Kong.
Property companies were among the gainers in Hong Kong, after China's central bank said it planned measures to help first-time home buyers.
Companies looking to sell shares in Hong Kong would have to appoint a sponsor at least two months before they file an application to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Kim Jong U said he had obtained several letters from Hong Kong companies interested in constructing or managing hotels or developing tourism.
Smaller companies, among them Pharmakon, based in Hong Kong, and Marco Polo Technologies, based in Bethesda, Maryland, are also applying modern techniques to standardised traditional remedies, before launching them in America.
Aside from the SARS outbreak, low trading volumes and lousy economic conditions, there are moves to strip the exchanges of basic powers: selecting companies to list and regulating them (in Hong Kong) and supervision of brokers (in Singapore).
Chinese companies account for the majority of IPOs in Hong Kong, but the number of new listings has plunged because of poor demand from investors as most of the companies that listed in the past year have underperformed the market.
Export weakness in July may have continued into August, which contributed to the decline of the HSBC PMI, which has a higher weight than the official PMI for export-oriented companies in the coastal region, noted Zhiwei Zhang, an analyst for Nomura Securities in Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, skepticism of companies that say they are remaking themselves as e-commerce plays abounds.
Robert Rountree, regional strategist at Nomura Research In-stitute in Hong Kong, thinks Asian companies will accelerate their use of capital markets versus banks for two reasons.
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.
Today, though it holds stakes in publicly traded companies such as Wison Engineering and Weichai Power, the family company is best known in Hong Kong for its real estate and hotels in Asia and Canada.
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Two Renful sister companies do manufacturing in Guangdong province across the border from Hong Kong.
In order to list their shares in Hong Kong or Shanghai, many Chinese companies are busy preparing internationally acceptable accounts and statutory reports.
Three UK is a member of the HWL group of companies, which include 3G operations in Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Macau and Sweden.
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Glencore will soon make its power felt as it uses the publicly traded shares and cash hoard that are the products of listing on stock exchanges in London and Hong Kong to acquire mining companies around the world, extending the commodities boom.
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