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Nicolas Aguzin is to leave his role as chief executive of Hong Kong’s stock market operator HKEX, at the end of a three-year term during which the exchange has struggled to maintain its status as a listings destination.
Aguzin, a former JPMorgan banker known as “Gucho”, has “informed the board that he will not seek reappointment at the end of his current contract in May 2024”, HKEX said in a statement on Friday.
He will be replaced by Bonnie Chan, HKEX’s chief operating officer, who has been given a three-year term.
HKEX said it was grateful for Aguzin’s “contribution and leadership over the last two-and-a-half years against a particularly challenging macro backdrop, shaped by Covid and weak global markets”. Aguzin said it had been “the privilege of a lifetime” to run HKEX.
Aguzin joined in 2021, just weeks before Beijing launched an unprecedented regulatory crackdown on lucrative foreign listings by China’s tech groups. The move undercut a key source of investor enthusiasm for the city’s stock market.
HKEX’s stock has plunged 42 per cent since Aguzin’s term began in the depths of the pandemic, during which both Hong Kong and mainland China were isolated from the wider financial world by harsh zero-Covid quarantine policies.
The market’s benchmark Hang Seng index has dropped 16.6 per cent this year. The bourse’s third-quarter results showed revenues from trading activity fell 10 per cent from a year ago, while stock listing fees slipped by a fifth. Net profit rose 30 per cent for the period on the back of strong investment income and derivatives trading volumes.
India’s National Stock Exchange is poised to take Hong Kong’s spot among the world’s largest trading venues, the Financial Times reported this week.
Data from Dealogic shows funds raised from initial public offerings in Hong Kong are down almost 40 per cent from a year ago at about $5bn, compared with an annual average of $37bn during the previous half-decade.
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