THE launch date of a stock trading connection between the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges hasn’t been set, the Hong Kong stock exchange said Friday.

    “There’s no timetable,” Charles Li, chief executive of the Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd., said on the sidelines of a listing ceremony. “All preparatory work has been done, and we’re waiting for the regulators to decide what’s the best time to launch.”

    Li said he hopes investors will be given two weeks’ notice prior to the launch. Any announcement would come jointly from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong, he said. But at a CSRC regular weekly press conference later Friday, Zhang Xiaojun, a spokesman for the CSRC, didn’t say when the program will be launched.

    The trading link, hailed as a milestone to open up the Chinese mainland to global investors, is expected to start Oct. 27, domestic and foreign media have reported.

    The Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program will at last let global investors trade Shanghai-listed shares directly via the Hong Kong exchange. Mainland investors are also interested in buying Hong Kong stocks directly for the first time. Deals will be subject to quotas both ways.

    The program, which will make shares in 568 companies available to investors, has been described as “too big to ignore” by Goldman Sachs. UBS has estimated that some US$2 trillion in shares will become available.

    The trading link requires an unprecedented level of coordination between multiple parties, including brokers, asset managers, the two exchanges, their clearing and settlement providers, data providers, technology firms and several regulators.

    Additionally, the Hong Kong and Shanghai markets have to overcome different currencies, fee structures, legal regimes, tax rules, national holidays, clearing and settlement processes and supervisory regimes.(SD-Agencies)