Word: crash
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...highly charged financial community of Hong Kong. Not only did the authorities collar one of the colony's most celebrated tycoons, they also added fuel to the controversy that has engulfed the Hong Kong Stock Exchange ever since Li shut it down for four days during the global financial crash last October. At a stormy news ! conference held when trading resumed, the contentious Li argued that he had given investors a chance to calm down. But his action had the opposite effect: it created a pent-up pressure to sell. After the exchange reopened, the Hang Seng stock index plunged...
...desperate effort to minimize members' losses. If that is true, the strategy did not work. Had the government not jumped in with $512 million in emergency loans, 39 of the 250 stock-index futures dealers might have failed. A brokerage that Li controlled took a terrible beating during the crash. As stock values plummeted, Li's personal fortune, estimated at $2 billion, may have dropped to $1.3 billion...
Though attention has focused on Li's closing of the exchange, that seems to have had nothing to do with his arrest. Officials say his detention resulted from a probe, launched before the crash, of the exchange's operations. The Hong Kong market, which has been almost unregulated, is known for its anything-goes philosophy. Insider trading is not discouraged, much less prosecuted, and there are few financial disclosure requirements for companies that list shares on the exchange...
...Some Hong Kong traders were concerned about how the market would react to Li's arrest. Investors, however, seemed to applaud the government's crackdown. Last week the Hang Seng index rose 6.5%, to 2452.52, though it still stood nearly 40% below the peak it had reached before the crash...
Like Cats and Starlight Express, though, Phantom is likely to prove "castproof," for much of its attraction lies in its spectacular coups de theatre inspired by Victorian stage machinery. Among the highlights: a boat gliding across a gloomy underground lake, and a chandelier that appears to crash onto the audience at the end of Act I. The multiple trapdoors that create many of the illusions -- there are 102 tiny ones to accommodate the candles that rise from the gloom to illuminate the Phantom's subterranean realm -- are all controlled by computer. Says Will Bowen, assistant production manager in London...