Lunch not for wimps in Hong Kong


Bummed out by Hong Kong's performance last year, when the Hang Seng was the worst main index in the world? How about a shorter lunch break?

By Alex Frew McMillan

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Lunch is not for wimps in Hong Kong. It's for brokers.

Power stockbroker Gordon Gekko slammed the midday meal in the movie "Wall Street," one of the defining films of the 1980s. Gekko, as played by Michael Douglas, said he didn't have time to eat.

He preferred to work. But that was the "Me" decade.

In 2002, comfort, food, luxury and plain old fun are making a comeback. So the post-September 11, service-driven 00s, or whatever you call them, could yet prove the era of the "Waiter."

Stock-exchange workers certainly have plenty of opportunity to call the waiter in Hong Kong. Brokers currently enjoy a two-hour lunch break, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Brokers: we don't take two hours

Many traders and brokers say they do not take the full two hours for lunch. Others believe it is a much-needed breather, or a chance to mingle with clients.

"Our two hour lunches are a time when we do business and meet with clients over lunch," one broker told the South China Morning Post.

Still, at just four hours, workers playing the Hong Kong market enjoy one of the shortest days of the world's main exchanges. Trade begins at 10 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m. -- with that hardly bite-size intermission.

That may be about to change. The parent of the Hong Kong stock exchange, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd., confirmed this week that it plans to lengthen its hours this year.

Kwong Ki-chi, the company's CEO, said details will be announced within the next two months. Since the decision favors big brokerages, whose staff are better able to cover a longer day, the final inking hasn't been agreed.

One victim will likely be lunch, though, and expected to shrink to an hour. Under one proposal, trading would run from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., and from 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.

'The days of two hours down the boozer are over'


Placing an order. 'Fries with that?'

Local restaurants are unhappy that they will face a crush of hungry traders at once. Brokers don't see the need to change.

"The days of brokers taking two-hour lunch breaks down at the local boozer, over a few pints of lager, have gone," one Hong Kong market player told CNN. "I find that most traders will stay in the office, trading other markets and have lunch at their desks."

The market participants aren't lazy, players say. They're just as likely to head to the gym or for a game of squash as belly up to the bar. Others trade Korea and Taiwan.

There's no lunch break in the world's biggest market, the United States. Despite the 24-hour trading possible there, thanks to after-hours services, many Hong Kong brokers don't see the need for longer hours. They wouldn't add to greater trading volume or business, they maintain.

What's more, the problems may be worse elsewhere. Hong Kong is prudish compared to its former colonist, according to one trader:

"Different story in London. Back there it is not unusual for the lads to go out boozing at lunchtime on a Friday, and not bother going back to the office 'til Monday," explained the trader, who not surprisingly wants to remain anonymous.

In Asia, even the Philippines, which used to only trade from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., has introduced an afternoon session. So there's a certain inevitability to longer hours in Hong Kong, too.

After all, it's a competitive world. While you're lording it up at the Mandarin Oriental, someone could be eating your lunch.