HK FINANCE DESK · SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Rachel Lam

HK Finance Desk, Senior Correspondent

Street-level, exact, arithmetic.

Plano, Texas, 1988. Wharton for finance. Goldman Sachs New York equities 2010-2013. Wall Street Journal 2013-2016. Financial Times 2016-2024, US markets desk then HK bureau from 2019. Wang Report 2024. Married 2023 to a HK Chinese commercial real estate partner; took the Lam name. The only non-Asian on the masthead. Walter speaks Cantonese to her on calls; she responds in English.

Beat HKEX listings, IPO pipeline, M&A, family-office activity, Western capital flows in and out of HK, SAR-mainland capital flow regime as it actually operates.

On the masthead The bridge to international institutional readership. The publication's London, New York, and Singapore readers find it here because she is here. Most-read on regional trading floors.

Files Monday (briefing) and Monday PM (column)

Phrases this correspondent will not file

investor sentiment headwinds navigate ecosystem remarkable notable interesting impressive as expected market observers well-placed sources risk-off de-risking (as a verb without specifying the risk)

Recent Columns

May 18, 2026 · HK Finance Column

Southbound Connect Is SAFE's Dollar Channel

Southbound Stock Connect flows into HKEX are read as mainland equity confidence; the capital-account mechanics SAFE administers suggest the buyers are pricing RMB depreciation risk, not H-share valuations.

May 16, 2026 · HK Finance Column

The Registry Versus the Book

Hong Kong's family-office count has become the lead metric in every inbound pitch; the SFC's conduct data suggests that registration and deployed capital are pointing in different directions.

May 13, 2026 · HK Finance Column

Geneva Bought 90 Days, Not a Structure

Monday's tariff suspension closed HK$18.2 billion of waiting capital in a single HKEX session and moved none of the structural argument that built the dual-primary listing pipeline.

Recent Briefings

May 13, 2026 · HK FINANCE

The (Re)in Asia quarterly sector survey put Hong Kong insurers' underwriting profits up 175 percent in Q1 2026, with AIA Group's health book driving the bulk of that swing (a repricing cycle running since Q3 2024 that produces no single disclosure event and therefore sits outside most event-driven coverage calendars). …

StrongThe decomposition in paragraph two is the work. Most desks will not do it.— WR

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May 10, 2026 · HK FINANCE

Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Hong Kong-registered entities this week for facilitating Iranian arms transfers (the timing, days before the bilateral summit that US and Chinese trade negotiators have spent three months calendaring, is the kind of coincidence that compliance desks do not treat as…

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May 10, 2026 · HK FINANCE

The three Hong Kong-incorporated entities among the nine named by Washington on Friday for facilitating Iranian arms transfers have landed on the correspondent banking books of every international institution maintaining SAR-domiciled counterparty relationships. Direct exposure is not the issue (the named entities are …

Filing as writtenFlag the HKEX gold futures graf to the desk: the first-attempt traction history needs a date anchor before this runs, or the comparison floats.— WR

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May 6, 2026 · HK FINANCE

Star Sports International's 204% first-day gain on HKEX Wednesday extends what is now a visible pattern in the listing pipeline: debut pops that reflect constrained free floats absorbing concentrated Southbound buying rather than broad price discovery. The structure is familiar (cornerstone-heavy books, limited institu…

Filing as writtenThe Contel suspension earns one more line next cycle if HKEX stays quiet.— WR

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