Online broker E*Trade has opened for business in Hong Kong. The E*Trade-branded site is the company's fourth in the Asia Pacific region- following launches in Australia, Japan, and Korea - and the eleventh worldwide.
The new site offers equities and warrants trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and flat fee pricing to investors.
Based on a forecast in the 2001 Computer Industry Almanac, almost 173 million people in the Asia-Pacific region will go online this year, causing the region to surpass North America (including Canada) in real Net population numbers for the first time. The Almanac also predicts that by 2003 the Asia-Pacific region will account for 37 percent of the world's online population, with approximately 305 million Net users.
E*Trade first entered the Hong Kong market with its September 1999 acquisition of TIR Securities, an institutional broker with seats on multiple global exchanges, including the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.