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It's business as usual, said Hong Kong’s top financial watchdogs, underlining an unchanged post-national security law environment for financial services despite increasing reports of significant operational changes.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), and financial secretary Paul Chan all issued statements this week reassuring market participants that the controversial national security law (NSL) will not effect how the sector is supervised and regulated. 

This follows weeks of reports in the run-up to and after the enactment of the law illustrating growing fears about political implications in finance. Financial workers and investors have expressed a wide range of real concerns from the market risks in the city’s stock market and its own currency, to a new operational environment of self-censorship.

«The same rules and regulations administered by the HKMA before the introduction of the NSL will continue to apply in the same way» said HKMA chief executive Eddie Yue in a statement issued yesterday. «To put it simply, it should be business as usual for the ongoing operations of our city’s financial institutions.»

List of Assurances

In the statement, Yue specifically detailed a sample list of activities that have remained unaffected post-NSL. They include sharing of market intelligence or commercial information with operations abroad; publication of research reports expressing a pessimistic view about the city's economy or market outlook; and freely trading, hedging and short-selling financial assets in the market.

Yue's comments came in a similar vein with Hong Kong financial secretary Chan, who earlier this week also issued a statement with a list of post-NSL assurances beyond just finance including: continued rights and freedom guaranteed by the Basic Law; judicial independence and the rule of law; preservation of the «One Country, Two Systems» regime; protection of foreign investor interests; and the maintenance of the Hong Kong dollar peg and the free flow of capital.

«As a free and pluralistic society, Hong Kong’s success as an international financial center thrives on the rule of law, free flow of information and capital, and freedom of speech and expression, etc,» Chan said on his official blog. «These fundamental values are upheld under the Law to ensure the continued prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.»

SFC: Unaware of Changes

Shortly after Chan’s statement this week, the SFC also said that its regulatory activities have also remained unchanged in an issued statement that underlined its «independent statutory» status.