Hong Kong Exchange's Potential Is Stuff Of Dreams For Isolated Asx

LAST month in Hong Kong I paid a visit to Ronald Arculli, the urbane chairman of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, the company that runs Hong Kong's stock exchange, and as Arculli regaled me with a series of astonishing growth statistics, a light bulb went on. I realised that while there were business angles to the Australian Stock Exchange's takeover of Sydney Futures Exchange last year, the deal really occurred because the ASX didn't have anything better to do.