The Admission and Regulation of Overseas Issuers : A Survey of Top Four Financial Centers

This chapter seeks to examine the potential discrepancies in the regulation applied to overseas issuers, as opposed to domestic issuers, of four leading financial centers. They are New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore. It consists of three substantive parts. The first part will entail a review of existing literature and empirical evidence concerning the motivations and current state of cross-listing. The second part, the major part of this chapter, will examine the listing route for an overseas issuer and enquire how it might be different from a domestic listing in the host country. This chapter particularly concerns the potential discrepancies of rules between a foreign listing and a domestic listing and asks if those discrepancies would lead to better or inferior investor protection. The third part will enquire the continuing regulation of foreign listed companies. This part will seek to review some regulatory concerns involving cross-listed companies and discuss what can be done to curb the problems, for instance, through regulatory cooperation between home and host regulators