【英语财经】分析：香港与内地的投资透明度 Stick to Hong Kong for investment ‘sunshine

When Mark Steward was head of enforcement at Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission, the market regulator, he liked to quote a former US Supreme Court justice’s observation that “sunshine is the best antiseptic”.

Before his recent move to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, Mr Steward set in train a number of investigations that have flooded more than a few dark and cosy rooms with Louis Brandeis’s antiseptic sunshine, causing considerable discomfort for some of the territory’s most powerful business figures.

One of these investigations, which began seven years ago, recently reached Hong Kong’s Market Misconduct Tribunal, a body empowered to hand down non-criminal sanctions for corporate misconduct.

Thus far the MMT proceeding has shed embarrassing light on what might be best described as incompetence at one of China’s most important state-owned industrial conglomerates, Hong Kong-based Citic Pacific. It has also highlighted just how big a transparency gap still exists between Hong Kong and mainland China.

At issue in the Citic Pacific hearing are foreign exchange contracts that the conglomerate entered into in 2008 to lock in favourable rates for a large Australian mining investment, but that eventually cost it $2bn. At the time, Citic Pacific’s boss was Larry Yung, one of Hong Kong’s best-known tycoons and the son of a former Chinese vice-president.

Mr Yung stepped down from his duties at Citic Pacific in 2009 and the company has since been absorbed into its Beijing-based parent, Citic Group.

The MMT will decide if Mr Yung and four other Citic Pacific directors knew of the mounting forex losses when they put out a statement on September 12, 2008, asserting that they were “not aware of any adverse material change in the financial or trading position of the group”. A month later, Citic Pacific issued a profit warning due to the hedging blunder.

The MMT has the power to impose fines and directorship bans on Mr Yung & Co. In a separate action before Hong Kong’s High Court, the SFC is pursuing the five men for $244m to compensate 4,500 investors who bought shares in the company five weeks between the two announcements.

Mr Yung has yet to testify before the MMT and may well be exonerated in both proceedings. But there will be no undoing the personal embarrassment he has already endured.

Earlier this month Mr Yung’s daughter, Frances, appeared before the tribunal. Ms Yung was a senior Citic Pacific finance executive at the time and has not been accused of any wrongdoing. In her testimony, she said she initially had “no idea” of the company’s potential exposure and described her father as “absolutely shocked and very angry” when he was eventually informed of the risk.

Such a drama would never play out north of the border in China, where prominent businessmen go missing for days or even weeks without explanation and powerful political figures are tried in secret.

Or consider the elephant in the room that was not acknowledged in March, when China’s commerce minister cut short his press briefing at the annual meeting of parliament, the National People’s Congress, and only took questions from journalists at reliable state media outlets.

Normally a marathon affair with plenty of opportunities for foreign correspondents to ask questions, it was not hard to guess the reason for Gao Hucheng’s new protocol.

Only a month earlier, there had been a leak of JPMorgan emails also dating from 2008. The emails revealed that Mr Gao had intervened with bankers in an attempt to help his son, who was struggling to hold on to a job at the US investment bank. Nine months after the awkward revelation, Mr Gao has yet to answer questions about the matter and any possible conflicts of interest stemming from it.

Investors are no doubt far more preoccupied with allegedly unfair disclosure by the likes of Citic, which can cost them dearly, than Mr Gao’s protective paternal instincts. But the two incidents reinforce an important fact about corporate life in China. When seeking sunshine, invest in Hong Kong, not the mainland.

在香港证监会(SFC)主管法规执行部时，施卫民(Mark Steward)喜欢引用美国最高法院前法官路易斯?布兰迪斯(Louis Brandeis)的一句话：“阳光是最好的消毒剂。”

施卫民在任时启动了多项调查，使布兰迪斯所说的有消毒功效的阳光照进许多黑暗而舒适的房间，叫一些在香港有头有脸的商界名流难堪。近期他加入了英国金融市场行为监管局(Financial Conduct Authority)。

其中一项始于7年前的调查近来转到了香港市场失当行为审裁处(Market Misconduct Tribunal，简称：审裁处)，该机构有权对涉及失当行为的公司做出非刑事处罚。

审裁处的审理已经令人尴尬地向外界揭露了中国最重要的国有综合性企业集团之一、总部位于香港的中信泰富(Citic Pacific)的无能——用这个词形容可能最恰当不过了。而且，它还突显出香港与内地在透明度方面仍然存在多么大的差距。

此案焦点是中信泰富在2008年签订的一些外汇交易合约，其初衷是为一笔庞大的澳大利亚矿业投资锁定有利的汇率，结果却造成20亿美元损失。其时中信泰富当家人是荣智健(Larry Yung)，香港最知名的商界人士之一，前中国国家副主席荣毅仁之子。

荣智健于2009年辞去在中信泰富的职务，该公司随后被并入总部位于北京的母公司中信集团(Citic Group)。

2008年9月12日，中信泰富公告称，集团的“财务或交易状况，概无出现任何重大不利变动”。

审裁处将裁定，对于集团外汇亏损滚雪球般扩大，荣智健及另外四名中信泰富董事在发布上述公告时是否知情。在该公告发布一个月后，中信泰富发布了因对冲失误导致的盈利预警。

审裁处有权对荣智健及其公司处以罚金和颁发担任董事禁令。在诉至香港高院(High Court)的另一起诉讼中，香港证监会要求五人缴付2.44亿美元，补偿在两则公告相间隔的5周内买进该公司股票的4500名投资者。

荣智健还没有在审裁处作证词发言，也很有可能在两起诉讼中都被宣判无罪，但这无法挽回他个人失去的颜面。

荣智健的女儿荣明方在当时是中信泰富一位高级财务主管，她没有被控存在不当行为。上月在审裁处作证时，荣明方表示，最初“并不知晓”上述外汇交易的潜在敞口，并称她的父亲最终得知相关风险时“感到极为震惊和愤怒”。

类似的剧情永远不会在中国内地上演——内地的知名商人可能莫名其妙失踪数日乃至数周，还有一些重要政治人物被秘密审讯。

再想想2015年3月发生的一件事——人人都知道是怎么回事，只是谁都不会明说——当时中国商务部长高虎城在人大年度会议期间缩短了记者招待会的时间，而且只让可靠的国有媒体机构的记者们提问。

这种记者招待会通常是马拉松式的，外国记者有很多提问机会，因此不难猜测高虎城这样安排的理由。

在那一个月前，摩根大通(JPMorgan)的一些邮件外泄。这些邮件表明，高虎城曾出面向一些银行家说情，以求帮助他的儿子保住在这家美国投行的工作。在事件曝光9个月后，高虎城仍没有就此事以及可能导致的利益冲突回答任何问题。

无疑，比起高虎城身为人父的护犊子本能，投资者更加耿耿于怀的是像中信泰富可能存在的这种不公平披露，因为这类行为可能害他们损失惨重。但这两件事都印证了关于中国企业环境的一个重要事实。假如你追寻阳光，那么在香港投资，而不是内地。

译者/何黎