Hong Kong – Hong Kong maintains fourth place in Global Financial Centres Index

Mar 23, 2023 | International

Hong Kong maintains fourth place in Global Financial Centres Index

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     Hong Kong maintained fourth place globally in the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) 33 Report published today (March 23) by the Z/Yen from the United Kingdom and the China Development Institute from Shenzhen.
 
     A Government spokesman said, “Hong Kong’s rankings in the four areas of business environment, infrastructure, financial sector development, and reputational and general rose by two places as compared with the previous issue, fully reflecting Hong Kong’s strengths and advantages as a leading global financial centre. Same as the previous issue, as compared to the assessment by financial industry practitioners from other major financial centres on the prospects of the cities in which they were based, practitioners based in Hong Kong were the most confident about the future competitiveness of Hong Kong as an international financial centre.
 
     “In view of the intense international competition, the Government has adopted a more vigorous and proactive development approach to press ahead with institutional enhancements and policy innovations as well as boosting promotion and publicity on Hong Kong’s full return to normalcy, so as to consolidate our strengths and continuously enhance the competitiveness of Hong Kong. The Government will continue to make good use of Hong Kong’s institutional advantages under ‘one country, two systems’ including a fine tradition of rule of law, a market-oriented and internationalised business environment, robust infrastructure support, internationally aligned regulatory regimes, diverse financial products, and free flow of information and capital, to strengthen Hong Kong’s capital market and our role as an international financial centre. With our sound and robust regulatory regime and risk management system, as well as the strong and solid buffer and resilience built in our financial markets, we are confident that the financial system of Hong Kong could withstand external shocks and remain resilient.
 
     “Addressing the closing meeting of the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress, President Xi Jinping said that the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has embarked on an irreversible and historic journey, and that we must firmly promote high-quality development and make solid efforts in advancing the implementation of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle. The 14th Five-Year Plan confirms the important functions and positioning of Hong Kong in the overall development of our country. Hong Kong will continue to consolidate its status as an international financial centre and give full play to connecting markets and investors of the Mainland and overseas, serving our country’s needs with our strengths. The Central People’s Government has recently promulgated the ‘Opinion on Providing Financial Support for the Comprehensive Deepening Reform and Opening Up of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone’, which set out 30 measures on financial reform and innovation, further strengthening the connection and high-level co-operation between the financial markets of Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and provides more opportunities for Hong Kong’s financial sector. With the staunch support of our country and our unique advantages under ‘one country, two systems’, Hong Kong will continue to create a strong impetus for growth and seize historic opportunities offered by the national development,” the spokesman added.
 
     The GFCI Report is released in March and September every year since 2007. In GFCI 33, 120 financial centres were assessed and Hong Kong ranked fourth globally with an overall rating of 722.

Jefferies maintains Buy rating on Yeahka(09923.HK)

Sep 2, 2022 | Business

Yeahka, the leading payment-based technology platform in China announced its 2022 interim results in late August. During the period, total revenue climbed 17.1% to RMB1,641.8 million, gross profit rose 52.1% to RMB529.3 million, and gross margin increased from 24.8% to 32.2%.

“Yeahka’s 1H revenue and adjusted EBITDA beat our estimates. Management highlighted multi-channels strategies to embrace in-store e-commerce opportunities and reaffirmed full-year GMV guidance. We expect it to maintain fast growth trend in 2023 due to the huge addressable market ahead. We revise our payment volume assumptions in 2H due to the recent resurgence of the pandemic and estimate take-rate to be better than expected for the full year.” Jefferies says in its newly released research report.

Jefferies emphasizes that Yeahka is one of the 16 payment service providers with a national bank card acquiring license and mobile phone payment license from the PBOC, which currently has 7.3m active payment service merchants. The payment business provides traffic, merchants and data insights to Yeahka, in particular payment and online marketing services. Backed by its merchants and consumer networks in payment, Yeahka adds value to merchants through SaaS products in digitization, online marketing through DSP platform and fintech services.

According to the report, Jefferies maintains its Buy rating with PT of HKD21 on Yeahka based on PEG. It applies a 10% discount to PEG due to uncertainties of macro headwinds and pandemic outbreak, factoring in the recent business developments with a focus on GPV and customer growth, while the support to merchants and investments in new initiatives are important for the long term.






Topic: Press release summary

Sectors: Cards & Payments, Cloud & Enterprise


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CMS Proposed Rule Maintains 4.36% Assumption-Based Rate Cut to Medicare Home Health Despite Sector Concerns

Jun 30, 2021 | Business

The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare (PQHH) – a coalition of home health leaders dedicated to developing innovative reforms to improve the program integrity, quality, and efficiency of home healthcare for our nation’s seniors – today expressed concern that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Calendar Year (CY) 2022 Home Health Prospective Payment System (“HHPPS”) Proposed Rule continues to impose a flawed 4.36% payment cut on Medicare’s home health benefit. However, while home health leaders caution against extending these unsubstantiated cuts for the third consecutive year, into 2022, they commend CMS’ inclusion of the nationwide expansion of the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model in today’s proposed rule.

Patient Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) Behavioral Rate Cuts

Despite concerns from lawmakers and providers – as well as a recent data analysis of 2020 Medicare claims data showing that assumptions used to justify the 2020 and 2021 cuts do not reflect actual provider behavior – CMS again proposed to maintain the 4.36% payment rate adjustment under the Patient Driven Groupings Model (PDGM) for another year. CMS did acknowledge, however, that home health stakeholders use different analytic methodologies for analyzing the impact of the behavioral adjustment cuts and states that the agency “intends to propose a methodology and, if appropriate, a temporary and permanent payment adjustment based on our analysis in future rulemaking.”

“Given Medicare’s own data about home health provider behavior, it is troubling that the agency continued the unjustified behavioral assumption cut for 2022. However, we remain encouraged that the agency states their intent to continue examining the data with the prospect of a future payment adjustment. We intend to continue working with the agency to ensure an adjustment is properly made, ” said Joanne Cunningham, Executive Director of the Partnership. “In order to ensure continued care delivery for Medicare beneficiaries, PQHH strongly urges CMS to eliminate the behavioral adjustment for home health payment rates for CY 2022 and reconcile any unsupported payment cuts for CYs 2020 and 2021,” added Cunningham.

The HHPPS proposed rule comes on the heels of a new analysis compiled by health economists at Dobson DaVanzo & Associates, which demonstrates, using a full set of 2020 Medicare claims data, how the assumptions CMS made when implementing the PDGM cut last year did not come to fruition, thus refuting the justification for the reimbursement reductions. Analyzing CMS’ own data, the researchers found that home health spending was 1.3% lower than projected ($16.6B in actual spending compared to an expected $16.9B) in 2020, the first year PDGM was in effect –– despite the tremendous financial strain the COVID-19 pandemic put on the home health provider sector.

Moreover, the health economics experts at Dobson DaVanzo & Associates found that low-utilization payment adjustment (LUPA) payments actually increased under PDGM and remained significantly higher than CMS originally projected, another justification for the home health cuts. While CMS assumed that home health providers would add additional visits in order to receive a full 30-day episode payment and avoid LUPA rates, home health agencies did not actually change their billing behavior to the highest paying diagnosis code and LUPA rates plateaued at 15.7% for 2020.

CMS’ data also show that Medicare home health spending fell significantly below the budget neutral level that Congress mandated for two consecutive years. According to the analysis, home health average case payments are still an estimated 3.2% below projected budget neutral levels ($1,747 estimated compared to $1,805), again undercutting the justification for the cuts.

Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model

The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare commends the inclusion of the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing Model in the proposed HHPPS rule and intends to work collaboratively with CMS to ensure the program is implemented to strengthen quality of care and improve efficiencies across the Medicare Home Health benefit.

“We look forward to providing comment and working with CMS to make the new HHVBP model a success by building off lessons learned during the nine-state demonstration program,” added Cunningham. “PQHH supports incentivizing home health providers who demonstrate they are providing a high level of quality care to Medicare’s home health patients – who include some of our nation’s most at-risk seniors.”

About the Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare
The Partnership for Quality Home Healthcare was established in 2010 to work in partnership with government officials to ensure access to quality home healthcare services for all Americans. Representing community- and hospital-based home healthcare agencies nationwide, the Partnership is dedicated to developing innovative reforms to improve the program integrity, quality and efficiency of home healthcare for our nation’s seniors. Visit pqhh.org to learn more.