This chapter provides a brief financial history of Hong Kong’s financial regulation and financial crises between 1841 and 1997. In the beginning, financial markets were subject to market-based regulation and the British colonial legal influence. Hong Kong took a long time to embrace financial regulation. The chapter argues that Hong Kong’s financial markets and the origins of financial regulation have developed, evolved, and shaped in response to a series of financial crises. Hong Kong underwent extensive market and regulatory change when the first modern banking crisis and stock market crash battered the economy between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s. The deposit-taking company and banking crises of the 1980s provided the impetus to develop the current regulatory and supervisory architecture. By 1997, subsequent regulatory reforms had shaped this architecture to resemble other developed financial centres, with the banking, securities, and insurance sectors having a designated supervisor and ordinance.

Prior to the 2008–9 global financial crisis, regulatory and supervisory frameworks were not designed to manage the orderly failure of systemically important financial institutions. Governments were compelled to bail out these institutions to mitigate a deeper financial and economic crisis from developing. In response, the Financial Stability Board formulated an internationally endorsed financial institution resolution framework. The regulatory attributes of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority strengthen its role as the lead resolution authority in the banking sector. This chapter argues that supervisory gaps and underlap undermine the effectiveness of the resolution regime and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority acting as a resolution authority. Cross-border resolutions pivot on coordination and intent between jurisdictions. During a banking crisis, multiple bank subsidiaries entering into resolution will severely stretch the resources of Hong Kong’s resolution authorities. Moreover, small credit institutions, are not captured by the regime. Historically, small credit institutions have caused several systemic banking crises in Hong Kong. Moneylending markets have grown exponentially over the past decade with the emergence of FinTechs and TechFins. Consequently, Hong Kong’s moneylending market is becoming a financial stability risk because a substantial portion are inadequately regulated and fall outside the resolution regime.

Managing banking sector liquidity in financial crises has historically depended on deposit protection and the lender of last resort. Deposit protection assuages market panics by guaranteeing that depositors will be paid if a bank fails. The lender of last resort is a capital injection to preclude a failure when an illiquid yet solvent bank has exhausted all other funding sources. This chapter analyzes deposit protection, the lender of last resort, and how different supervisory structures influence the implementation of these bank stabilization tools. Moreover, certain structures can adversely affect supervisors from fulfilling their financial stability mandates. Hong Kong is susceptible to a supervisory coordination failure from a statutory friction that prioritizes monetary over banking stability. A tension is created within the Hong Kong Monetary Authority which could compel the Financial Secretary to usurp control during a financial crisis. This tension exposes the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to macro-prudential underlap which could undermine its financial stability mandate. Despite these flaws, the statutory mandates of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority complement Hong Kong’s deposit protection and lender-of-last-resort policies, which have performed faultlessly over the past 20 years. However, neither approach has been sufficiently tested during this period.

Nordic countries have their own variations of the same corporate law theme, based on equality between shareholders and minority protection. However, U.S.-style shareholder primacy has influenced corporate practices, legal literature and governance codes. The strength of the ‘Nordic model’ is not in law or in codes, but in a typically Nordic form of ‘active ownership’ by non-institutional direct shareholders such as families, foundations and public pension funds. It is not, however, enough and requires broader participation for sustainability. The answer might be in corporate board activity. The Nordic ‘soft’ shareholder activism, based on a dialogue between the investors and the board, gives room for the boards to convince the investors of the advantages of long-term sustainability. Recurring Nordic bank crises show that bankers’ motives for profit maximisation should be particularly constrained.