Simmons acts first on new Hong Kong index

The Hong Kong office of City firm Simmons & Simmons has acted on the first private company listing on a new market of the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The firm advised investment bank ICEA Capital, which is the global co-ordinator, sponsor and lead manager

for the listing of Yuxing InfoTech Holdings, a high-tech company based in Beijing.

The new index, the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM), is Hong Kong's equivalent of the Techmark index, which

was launched in the UK in November last year.

Yuxing InfoTech is the first privately-owned Chinese company to list on GEM. It is also the first to have obtained approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission for listing.

The listing is the first time Simmons has acted for ICEA Capital on a corporate finance transaction, although the Hong Kong office has advised the company on litigation and debt recovery work.

ICEA is an investment bank specialising in corporate finance and listed company advisory work - its main shareholders are the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Bank of East Asia.

The Simmons team of three worked on the deal for five months, led by corporate partner Stephen Mok.

Mok says: "We are advising on a number of prospective listings on the GEM. A combination of our corporate finance practice and communications practice makes us a natural choice for companies, particularly those in the high-tech industry, interested in the GEM."

Mok says he was approached to do the work because he knows key individuals at ICEA.

He says: "Meocre Li, the chief executive, was at Natwest when we advised on the listing in Hong Kong and London of Beijing Datang in 1997."

US law firm Morrison & Forester advised ICEA on a parallel listing in the US.