How many sandwiches can a stockbroker in Hong Kong eat in 2 hours?
What did you have for lunch today? Did you manage to get out of the office or did you grab a quick sandwich at your desk?
If you’re a stockbroker working at the Hong Kong stock exchange then the chances are you had a rather nice long lunch.
The Hong Kong stock exchange has one of the shortest “opening hours” out of the major stock exchanges.
It is open for business 4 hours a day and also enjoys a rather pleasant 2 hour lunch break.
It also does fairly well when looking at the opening hours of the other major stock exchanges around the world:
- London, Paris and Frankfurt – 8.5 hours
- New York – 6.5 hours
- Australia – 6 hours
- Tokyo – 4.5 hours
For anyone that has lived or worked in Hong Kong this may come as a bit of a surprise as it’s one of the busiest most frenetic cities in the world.
Alas, it seems that their 2 hour lunch break is now under threat.
A consultation paper has recently been issued and it is raises the proposal of:
- Starting half an hour earlier at 9.30am (surely it’s virtually impossible to have a nice breakfast if you have to be in the office at 9.30?)
- Reducing the lunch break from 2 hours to an almost impossible to fit in a 3 course meal and a bottle of wine timescale of 1 hour.
- Luckily there are no plans to change the closing time of 4pm so the brokers will at least have a reasonable time to get ready for dinner.
The arguments in favour of adjusting the opening hours are to enable it to tie in with the mainland Shanghai exchange opening hours.
In what can only be described as “hardly the surprise of the century” it was reported that 70% of the Hong Kong Securities Professionals Association members that were asked their opinion on the proposals felt that the 2 hour lunch break should remain.
Closing for lunch isn’t something that you find in the majority of stock exchanges elsewhere around the world.
If for example you wanted to get the views of somebody from London who had actually experienced the London stock exchange closing for lunch you’d have to find a very elderly broker. The London Stock exchange last closed for lunch 60 years ago in 1950.
