FIVE years ago, foreign consumer brands listing in Hong Kong carried the cachet of a Ian Fleming hero: Stylish, international, and with an unmistakable scent of victory about them. Nowadays, they’re starting to resemble the broken dead-enders of a Graham Greene novel.
In June 2011, when Samsonite and Prada followed L’Occitane in raising capital in Hong Kong, a presence in a market that put such high premiums on its stocks seemed an obvious move. Blended forward enterprise value-to-EBITDA valuations were 8.0 on the Hang Seng Index at the start of that month, versus 7.4 on the S&P 500, 5.3 on Italy’s FTSE MIB, and 5.8 on France’s CAC 40.