The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has licensed Scoach to connect market players in Hong Kong directly to the exchange's Xetra trading system. In the future, banks, advisers and broker dealers will be able to use the Xetra network to place structured product orders for trading on Scoach.
"Connecting market participants in Asia clearly demonstrates the international character of Scoach," said Scoach CEO Christian Reuss. "Having already connected many European markets, we are now taking the next logical step overseas. We are convinced that the world's largest market and Europe's largest market will complement each other very well and that both sides will benefit."
According to Scoach, Hong Kong has the highest turnover of structured products in the world and following the agreement with the regulator, clients of connected banks and advisers in Hong Kong will now gain access to supervised stock exchange trading in Germany. Due to the time difference between Hong Kong and Frankfurt, the trading time for the leverage products that are very popular in Hong Kong has been extended.
Many issuers active on the Xetra network are already active in Hong Kong, said Scoach, and will now be able to access around 400,000 tradable leverage products. Other products available for Hong Kong investors will be the range of CBBCs (callable bull and bear contracts) and warrants in Hong Kong dollars (HKD) and other currencies. Scoach already offers selected warrants denominated in HKD and over 5,200 structured products with underlying instruments listed in Hong Kong.
Scoach said it will also offer access to its product finder in Chinese script to help investors and order flow providers better navigate the Xetra system, allowing investors to filter the product offering according to their own preferences and to access real-time price information.