Hong Kong’s Consumer Council said yesterday it was considering suing banks that allegedly sold mini-bonds backed by failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers as risk-free investments.
The 50 cases the council was considering backing mostly concerned vulnerable elderly people, who said their banks had not fully explained to them the risks involved when selling them the mini-bonds, a spokeswoman for the council said.
The complainants in the cases, which involved 14 banks, had invested between HK$100,000 and HK$2 million (US$256,000) in the controversial financial products.
“We will continue our vetting to identify representative cases for legal action,” the spokeswoman said.
“We now have HK$16 million in our legal action fund. But the government has promised that it will give us unlimited financial support once we have identified cases with good grounds,” she said.
Johannes Chan (陳文敏), chairman of the council’s legal action fund, told the South China Morning Post that their focus on elderly and poorly educated investors would give them a higher chance of success in court.
“It’s easier to establish that their trust has been abused or that they have been misled than [to make the same case for], say, someone who has a university education and has invested for years,” Chan said.
Despite their name, the mini-bonds are complex financial products linked to a bundle of derivatives backed by Lehman, and their value plummeted after the investment bank collapsed in September.
The council said in a statement that it had received 3,638 complaints and 1,388 enquiries from investors.
Meanwhile, more than 100 investors protested outside the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s de facto central bank, before marching to individual banks to demand a full refund of their investment yesterday morning.
Individual banks, including the Bank of China (Hong Kong), have started to negotiate compensation deals with customers. But many of the cases remained left out as gathering evidence to prove mis-selling could be difficult.
All the banks have agreed to adopt a government proposal for them to buy back the products from customers at their current market value but the move failed to pacify investors who said they would only get back a portion of their investment.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS