As of December 2024, HKEX has a market capitalization of approximately US$35 trillion and 2,631 listed companies, making it the 8th largest stock exchange globally.

[citation needed] In April 2002, HKEX launched a study to consider the delisting of "penny stocks" to improve market efficiency.

[5] Its 25 July 2002 proposal to cancel listings of companies trading below HK$0.50 for 30 straight days hit penny stocks hard.

[6] Activist investor David Webb said that HKEX's desire to delist stemmed from these companies generating very little revenue for the exchange but taking up a disproportionate amount of staff resources.

HKEX is also the majority owner of the Qianhai Mercantile Exchange, a commodities trading platform in mainland China which has yet to officially begin operations.

[17] A Volatility Control Mechanism (VCM),[18] which functions similarly to circuit breakers on US exchanges, was implemented in two phases on 22 August 2016 and 16 January 2017.

Analysts expect the government will continue to increase its stake, as HKEX is being prepared "for future integration and alliance with mainland exchanges".

On 28 November 2008, new rules were announced which included, inter alia, limitation of directors' trading in their companies' shares between the end of each semester until after publication of its results.

[25] The previous blackout period is within one month of publication, and was considered by HKEx to "fail to ensure that insiders do not abuse the market while in possession of unpublished price-sensitive information".

[26] In mid-December, legislators representing the functional constituencies, led by Abraham Razack, Chim Pui Chung and David Li, demanded that regulators postponed the execution of a prolonged blackout proposal.

Razack said HKEx did not consult widely enough and the process was a "black- box operation" that did not reflect industry opinion; David Webb said that the campaign was due to some well-connected tycoons and company directors' rearguard action to derail the rule change.

At the time, JP Morgan was investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice into possible violation of anti-bribery laws by improperly hiring relatives of Chinese officials, known as "princelings", to win business.