Hong Kong Revises 'Market Sounding' Rules to Put Burden on Banks.

Hong Kong's securities watchdog, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), is planning to release revised market sounding guidelines by the end of the year. The new guidelines will focus on publicly listed securities and will shift the responsibility for preventing the abuse of pre-deal confidential information to banks and brokers. The SFC has been engaging in private conversations with industry participants to fine-tune the guidelines further. The aim is to prevent the sharing of confidential information prior to market-moving deal announcements and to revive Hong Kong's financial hub status. The guidelines will also be shared with the International Organization of Securities Commissions to align with other regulators. [Extracted from the article]