China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has turned heads globally, with its initial public offering bonanza expected to steam along in 2026, luring investors who are drooling over Chinese assets bolstered by the country's growth prospects.

The Hong Kong bourse raised over HK$280 billion ($35.9 billion) in 2025, making it the world's largest IPO market. The listing gong for a dozen tech heavyweights rang in a brisk new year with 400 companies waiting in the IPO pipeline.

The 19th Asian Financial Forum, which concluded on Tuesday in the city, was abuzz with fortune-telling of "the next CATL," which raised over HK$35 billion last May.

Results of a joint survey conducted by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and EY, released at the forum, showed that 88 percent of business leaders polled cited Hong Kong's financial market ecosystem, marked by a robust IPO pipeline, as its unique strength.

Australian private equity fund manager Hussein Rifai has been traveling to Hong Kong for business since the 1980s, offering financial services to Chinese investors and companies. As investor interest heightened for Chinese assets, he hobnobbed with mainland and Hong Kong brokers at the forum in search of bigger deals.

"I believe there is a lot of room for two-way investment between Australia and China, especially in industries like food, mining and artificial intelligence," he said, adding that Chinese AI models can help make corporate management more efficient in Australia.

"Hong Kong is where global patient capital converges," said Wang Shuguang, president of China International Capital Corp Ltd. Listing in Hong Kong opens doors to not just global capital, but knowledge of and presence in target markets, he said.

China's pledges to pursue high-quality development as well as self-reliance and strength in science and technology in the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period add to the city's strengths as a two-way fundraising platform.

Investor and philanthropist Paul Polman said on the sidelines of the forum that China will maintain its lead in green technologies in the years to come, and Hong Kong's financial ecosystem and startup culture will help companies bring these technologies to the world.

"In asset management, capital and trading businesses, Hong Kong enjoys a real competitive advantage over other places in the region," said Sjoerd Leenart, Asia Pacific CEO at J. P. Morgan, at the forum's inaugural Global Business Summit on Tuesday.

Hong Kong's role as the gateway to the Chinese mainland market is "incredibly important," he said, citing the enormous northbound and southbound capital flows enabled by stock and bond connect programs.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is looking to strengthen the capital market through a number of efforts. It is optimizing listing requirements to bring diverse companies to the stock exchange and promoting a settlement cycle of one business day after the trade date. The board lot size and the minimum spread of the stock market are also under review for better market liquidity.

- Xinhua