When there are already not many activities planned under the threat of Covid-19, we still see rare, exciting events being cancelled at the eleventh hour.
The long-awaited inaugural flight under the Singapore-Hong Kong air travel bubble arrangement was rescheduled last minute at 5 p.m. the day before its official takeoff. Earlier this month, the high-profile dual listings of the Ant Group in Shanghai and Hong Kong was also suspended by the Chinese authorities two days before its public debut.
With 872 times oversubscribed, the Ant Group IPO would have raised a historic US$37 billion that split evenly between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Banks in Hong Kong had been flooded with high liquidity in the last two months. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority was forced to sell HK$251 billion (S$44.07 billion) Hong Kong dollars into the market to stop its currency from breaking the US dollar peg. With the sudden listing suspension, investors foresaw a massive reduction of the company’s IPO value...