Notes on the CCASS shareholdings

1. CCASS stands for Central Clearing and Automated Settlement System.
2. CCASS is operated by Hong Kong Securities Clearing Company Limited (HKSCC), wholly-owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx). In order to settle a trade on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Ltd (SEHK, also wholly-owned by HKEx), securities must be deposited with CCASS. HKSCC then registers them in the name of HKSCC Nominees Limited (HKSCCN), on the issuer's share register. Hong Kong is still an immobilized but not scripless system.
3. Consequently, listed share registers tend to have a huge holding in the name of HKSCCN, and not much else, besides controlling shareholders and a few employee holders. For this reason, since 28-Apr-08, HKEx has been disclosing the list of CCASS Participant holdings on its web site, up to 1 year back.
4. We capture, preserve and analyze the data. Preservation allows researchers to look back further than one year. Analysis allows you to see the date the holding last changed, the holdings of each participant, and the net daily movements of that participant's holdings in each stock. In the case of retail brokers, this will give you a clearer idea of what stocks they deal in most, and if you have a margin account, what the pool of collateral might include. This collateral pool is often pledged to lenders, and if its value falls suddenly then it can trigger a brokerage collapse. By looking at recent trends you can have some idea, up to 2 days ago, whether a broker was selling or buying a line of stock. For institutional brokers, it is harder to tell, as most of their clients hold stock through the major custodians. If custodian holdings are increasing, then institutions are probably net buyers.
5. Our records begin on 26-Jun-07 so any holding you see dated 26-Jun-07 may not have changed on that date.
6. Types of CCASS Participants are brokers, custodians, pledgees, clearing houses and Investor Participants (IPs). The CCASS IDs of brokers are prefixed "B", custodians are prefixed "C", pledgee participants are prefixed "P" and clearing houses are prefixed "A". Broker participants may also be pledgees, and custodians may hold pledged stock.
7. With the exception of IPs, CCASS Participants may or may not have beneficial interests in the shares they hold in CCASS, so don't use these data as a guide to beneficial ownership.
8. Holdings of IPs are not disclosed individually unless they have consented. This allows them the same level of privacy that they would enjoy if they held the shares through a broker.
9. IP CCASS IDs are not published, so if they change their names, we have to regard them as new participants.
10. The domicile of corporate participants of all kinds is not disclosed, so the names may not uniquely identify them either.
11. Issued shares are approximate, as issuers are not required to disclose the figure whenever it changes. Consequently percentage stakes may be wrong if the figure is outdated. We use the disclosed issued shares as at the latest date on or prior to the date you are looking at. For histories, percentages may be wrong when a stock is undergoing a consolidation or split, as we do not track holdings during the period of parallel trading on a different stock code.
12. We do not track the holdings on temporary stock codes during periods of parallel trading, such as during a rights issue, stock split or consolidation. Consequently during these periods percentage stakes may be wrong and our record of holdings may be frozen. Parallel trading has been an anachronism since CCASS was introduced in 1992, and was due to be abolished on 3-Nov-08, but abolition has been delayed.
13. Holdings are raw, as disclosed, and unadjusted for stock splits etc.. Therefore you will see sudden increases or decreases on the day that such corporate actions take affect.
14. Sort the holdings in descending order or in date order to see former holders with zero balances. To keep the list readable, we don't show zero holdings when sorted by name or by ascending holding.
15. Trades are normally settled on T+2, so the holdings you are looking at, if they are due to market trades, relate to trades 2 clearing days earlier. On certain half-days before a public holiday or during a typhoon. there is no clearing.
16. If a Participant ceases to exist, we do not remove its records, so the list of Participants includes those who now have zero holdings in CCASS.
17. Some movements are simply due to deposits or withdrawals of securities not related to a market trade.
18. We estimate the number of "securities not in CCASS" by deducting those which are from the latest number of issued shares on or prior to that date, as captured from the HKEx web site. Therefore if the number of issued securities is wrong, then the number of securities not in CCASS is wrong.
19. We disclaim any liability for any reliance on this data and for any errors or omissions.