Hong Kong builds global resources outreach
- 21 March 2026
The standout market in the world last year for mining and metals IPOs is set to play a much bigger role in bridging the industry’s funding gap and could even figure more prominently in the junior financing space, according to leaders speaking at the upcoming Resourcing Tomorrow Hong Kong conference.
Hong Kong’s 231% year-on-year increase in IPO fundraising to US$37.4 billion in 2025 included $5.4 billion of mining and metals initial offerings, led by Zijin Gold International’s $3.6 billion debut, and $9.5 billion of other equity issuance. That was a 10-year high for the Hong Kong market, says Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) head of global issuer services, Johnson Chui.
Alvin Tse, Deloitte China’s national Hong Kong Offering leader, says the market’s stellar 2025 reflected “the positive impact of many reforms undertaken by HKEX and the Securities & Futures Commissions in the last few years”.
“In particular the streamlined listing review process, the specialist technology listing regime, the Technology Enterprises Channel, the shortening of IPO settlement and the new IPO price discovery mechanism,” Tse says.
Deloitte’s Capital Market Services Group says the Hong Kong IPO market is likely to top $38 billion this year with circa-160 of new listings. “US interest rate cuts and treasury bills purchases, Chinese enterprises’ go-global expansion, China’s domestic consumption policies and support for hard technology and new productivity sectors and a boost to liquidity from Hong Kong’s ongoing and potential capital market reforms are expected to attract more jumbo IPOs,” it says.
By early this month Hong Kong’s 2026 IPO issuance had already passed $11.5 billion, compared with $1.5 billion at the same time last year, according to Dealogic. It said overall ECM issuance was well ahead of the 2025 pace.
Jason Chang, co-founder and CEO of Hong Kong-based specialist resources private equity manager EMR Capital, says he has seen a significant rise in regional appetite for exposure to the resources sector via the east Asia finance hub.
“Two of the largest IPOs globally were in the mining and critical mineral sector right here in Hong Kong. And Hong Kong has regained its number one spot in the world as the largest IPO market,” says Chang, who also heads the Australian Chamber of Commerce Hong Kong. EMR maintains a strong presence in Australia, where it was founded in 2011.
“I think this year you’re going to see very much the same trend. There’s a pipeline of over 200 companies that are looking to list on the Hong Kong exchange and many of them are in fact in the resources and critical mineral sector.
“There is significant appetite from north Asia to get more exposure to this sector.
“The world's largest demand for critical minerals and resources is this time zone and Hong Kong is right at the centre of it. One of the reasons why EMR capital relocated our headquarters to Hong Kong is to be closer to north Asia – Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indochina, China – and [the mineral-rich countries of] south-east Asia.
“So from a resources perspective I think the Hong Kong public and private capital markets are going to continue to flourish and Resourcing Tomorrow is super exciting because it will bring together, possibly for the first time, the most important players in this sector.”
Chui says Zijin Gold International’s 2025 IPO was emblematic of the HK exchange’s global expansion as an international fundraising platform for resources companies with 26 cornerstone investors from North America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East anchoring about half of its bookbuild.
“International investor engagement [was] particularly robust in 2025 with diverse investor participation from major investor categories including long-only, PE, strategic, hedge fund and sovereign wealth funds,” he says.
“Nearly a fifth of all Hong Kong listings in 2025 were dual or multi-listings with several US ADRs and a stream of A-to-H IPOs, including a world-leading Chinese mainland battery maker [CATL] that earmarked the bulk of proceeds for building a factory in Europe – one of a number of Chinese mainland companies that leveraged a Hong Kong IPO in 2025 to expand their international footprint.”
Zijin Mining Group independent director David Bo, a 30-year veteran of the mining and energy sectors and author of, “The Ins and Outs of International Mining”, believes further HKSE regulatory reform could open a door to greater mining capital flows in future.
“The Hong Kong Stock exchange is the natural place for Chinese mining houses to accept international capital and it has played such a role extremely well over the past years,” says Bo.
“And they are currently getting really busy.
“They have successfully fostered an ecosystem by accommodating quite a few Chinese mining houses, big and small, to go get listed or dual-listed there.
“But there is more they can do. You can call it reform. I have made comments in my pitches in China that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange can have the full mining spectrum if they loosen their listing rules a little bit further to accommodate junior mining companies, [including] pre-cashflow explorers and developers.”
Joyce Lee, who heads international law firm McCarthy Tetrault’s National Asia Practice, says Hong Kong can leverage its unique place among global financial centres and become an even more important conduit for mining capital over the next decade.
“I think that Hong Kong has done a lot of catch-up in the past decade,” says Lee, who is renowned for her expertise in cross-border transactions involving Chinese investors in natural resources projects.
“It used to have no mining or very little mining.
“An ecosystem has to be built up for an exchange to credibly claim that they are a serious mining exchange. And I think Hong Kong has done great job in doing that in the past decade, starting from the Chapter 18 [mineral company listing rules].
“They have been very proactive in talking to the industry, in modifying the rules to be more realistic and accommodating, especially to advanced-stage exploration companies.
“And I think the one area that can be bettered, which is the technical support system within Hong Kong for the mining community, is something that they are already working on.
“On the capital markets and financing there are experts acting for underwriters and for issuers who know mining from a legal and accounting perspective. Western jurisdictions have the mining technical system that is different, say, from China, and I think there is still a gap there that needs to be bridged. But that technical support base is growing.”
Johnson Chui, Jason Chang, David Bo and Joyce Lee are among many prominent industry leaders who will be speaking at Resourcing Tomorrow Hong Kong, at Hong Kong’s Four Seasons Hotel, from April 16-17, 2026.
