In 1987, as New York and London were suddenly convulsed by the biggest stock market crash since the second world war, another catastrophe was narrowly averted thousands of miles away in Hong Kong.
To this day it remains a footnote in the story of Black Monday, as the September crash became known. But the lessons of the Hong Kong events are reverberating anew around financial capitals as Greece teeters towards possible default, stock markets pull back on worries about slowing global growth and regulators struggle to implement reforms aimed at clearing up after the latest crisis of 2008.
In Hong Kong 24 years ago, authorities and local banks were forced to bail out the territory’s clearing house after it became clear that it would not have the resources to deal with possible mass defaults among traders on the futures exchange as their bets on the Hang Seng index turned sour. It was a rare example of the near- failure of a clearing house.
