AFP:Hong Kong watchdog slams brokerage in minibond scandal

5 Apr 2009
Hong Kong's securities watchdog has reprimanded a major brokerage for misselling controversial financial products backed by failed US giant Lehman Brothers, a spokesman said Sunday.

KGI Asia Ltd, which has more than 40,000 clients in Hong Kong, has agreed to repay 1.4 million Hong Kong dollars (180,000 US) to five people wrongly sold so-called "minibonds", the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said in a statement.

The minibonds have been at the centre of major scandal in the city, after they were sold to investors -- including many vulnerable retirees -- before their value collapsed when the US bank went bankrupt last September.

Following an investigation, the SFC found that KGI Asia had not adequately assessed the risk of the minibonds and that sales staff had not fully understood the products they were selling.

KGI Asia has agreed to fully refund the five clients, none of them professional investors, the SFC statement said. The brokerage has not admitted any liability.

"This outcome resolves our concerns about KGI's past sales practices in respect of Lehman Brothers minibonds, covers present losses incurred to their clients and provides assurance that these problems will not arise again in the future," said Mark Steward, the SFC's executive director of enforcement.

The move is the latest refund by a major financial firm in Hong Kong in the scandal, which has sparked multiple protests as investors claim they were sold the products on the understanding they were rock solid.

But legislators have complained that thousands of misselling cases have still not been dealt with by the regulators, and the firms that sold the products have been dragging their feet.

More than 40,000 Hong Kong investors had put a total of 15.7 billion Hong Kong dollars of their savings into minibonds and other complex products backed by the investment bank.

Former Wall Street icon Lehman Brothers collapsed in September under mountains of debt.