For China’s Startups, New York Stock Markets Still Beat Hong Kong

Despite a number of high-profile Chinese startups listing in Hong Kong this year, the U.S. still provides a compelling market for initial public offerings because of its more sophisticated investors, several Chinese entrepreneurs and investors said Monday during an onstage interview at The Information’s Subscriber Summit in Hong Kong.

Annabelle Yu Long, head of German publisher Bertelsmann’s Chinese investment arm, said her advice to CEOs of portfolio companies is to pick the place where their businesses are understood. “The maturity and sophistication of the [Hong Kong] market isn’t there yet,” she said. Ms. Long was an early investor in online car market Bitauto, in which Chinese tech giants Tencent and JD.com later invested. She also invested in Mobike, a bike rental startup that was acquired by Meituan earlier this year in a multibillion-dollar deal.