Sun Shuming could barely contain his joy. With one hand holding aloft a glass of champagne and the other making a thumbs-up sign, Mr Sun beamed as a bank of cameramen snapped away on the floor of the Hong Kong stock exchange. Shares in GF Securities, the brokerage he runs, had just jumped 40 per cent within moments of going public on Friday morning.
The debut of GF Securities could not have been better timed, coming at the end of a week of record trading in Hong Kong. The sudden arrival of billions of dollars from mainland Chinese investors pushed the market to its highest in more than seven years, while volumes on the exchange smashed all records.
On Thursday, the value of trades on the Hong Kong market was more than double the combined figure for London, Frankfurt and Paris. So much capital flowed into the city that its monetary authority was forced to intervene to protect its currency peg to the US dollar.