Concurrent with the data collection and organization process, oral interviews were undertaken with ten persons on a candid, confidential and off-the-record/no-attribution basis. Those interviewed included senior individuals from issuers, investment banks and regulators, among others. No consideration was exchanged for taking part in an interview.
Each interview lasted around 90 minutes. Prior to the interview, broad areas of interest were identified to the interviewee as well as an indication of the research being undertaken in connection with the data collection exercise. This included providing a list of open-ended questions as well as broad topics of interest. The purpose of this was to frame the context of the interview rather than to limit its scope and in some interviews new areas of enquiry emerged based on the interviewee's personal experiences, observations and expectations.
The interviews were used primarily as a means to crosscheck and to further stimulate the main directions the study was taking. The interviews provided another avenue to identify and explore areas of CG that were perceived to be problematic, as well as those areas thought to be working well. While each interviewee's profile and experience lent a slightly different emphasis to the discussion, it was not unusual to see areas of common concern identified.
Although the focus of each interview was the CG system in Hong Kong, in several cases the interviews came to discuss developments or differences in other markets. The need to understand the context of Mainland China was a repeating theme.
The opportunity was also taken to discuss the areas most in need of reform as well as testing, in a very preliminary sense, some initial thinking as to what reform proposals might or might not work and/or be acceptable to the Hong Kong market.