Curaçao’s fledgling stock exchange intended to attract Latin American companies seeking to raise money from European investors. Instead, Chinese firms came.
Water Years Holdings’ 2017 debut on the Dutch Caribbean Securities Exchange (DCSX) opened the floodgates for Chinese companies to list on the exchange. Credit: DCSX
When Water Years Holdings, a small Chinese firm that sells wine and candy made from blueberries, was looking to go public in 2017, there were few options. The company, which had earned a profit of less than $50,000 in the prior year, was too small to qualify for a listing on the Shanghai or Hong Kong stock exchanges. New York and Singapore were also out of the question.
So company executives hopped on a flight to Curaçao, a small Dutch territory about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela, to join the Dutch Caribbean Securities Exchange (DCSX). It was one of the island’s first Chinese listings, and in the bourse’s ceremonial hall, executives banged a ceremonial gong and exchanged champagne toasts with Curaçao power brokers, such as the territory’s minister of finance.
Credit: Free Vector Maps
“In the future, there will be a steady flow of Chinese companies entering Europe’s capital market,” Liu Yang, the chairman of Water Years, said at a press conference held in B
Exclusive longform investigative journalism, Q&As, news and analysis, and data on Chinese business elites and corporations. We publish China scoops you won't find anywhere else.
A weekly curated reading list on China from David Barboza, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Shanghai correspondent for The New York Times.
A daily roundup of China finance, business and economics headlines.
We offer discounts for groups, institutions and students. Go to our Subscriptions page for details.
Did Eric Dai expose a Chinese scheme to steal critical military technology? Or did he steal millions of dollars from a Chinese company by exploiting geopolitical tensions? It's not entirely clear, but Dai's saga hits all the high notes of current U.S.-China tensions, including convoluted plots to illicitly acquire U.S. semiconductor technology and extraterritorial schemes to harass, intimidate and coerce the Chinese diaspora. What is clear is that, for Dai, who founded a successful Chinese investment firm but is now seeking asylum in the U.S., it feels like World War III.
The former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia talks about why engagement hasn’t failed, it just hasn’t succeeded yet; why strategic empathy is so hard to do; and why the U.S. needs an approach to...
