"The professionals have an important role in ensuring the quality of new listings. The HKEx paper will list the standards we expect them to meet," he said, adding that the paper would ask whether professionals should carry out more due diligence on mainland enterprises. Most of the record 117 new listings in 2002 were by mainland Chinese companies desperate to raise capital to underpin their rapidly expanding businesses - capital which cannot be raised on China's own feeble markets. But standards of transparency and governance on the mainland are not what they should be, meaning that the task of grooming mainland companies for listing requires above average attention from Hong Kong professionals.

Mr Kwong said the government's Financial Services and Treasury Bureau should take the lead in co-ordinating regulators to improve the quality of listed companies: "It will not achieve anything if the HKEx is trying to improve the quality of listed companies alone," he said. "In the US, it was the government which took the lead to improve corporate governance and introduce other market reforms after the outbreak of the US corporate scandals."