The Hong Kong city government and the Monetary Authority said Wednesday that many recommendations have been implemented to enhance regulation since the Lehman Brothers incident and they endeavor to foster investor protection and financial stability in the future.

The Legislative Council Subcommittee, after three years of investigation, released a long report in the day, in which it blamed lax regulation, banking malpractice and government inaction for the problems associated with the sale of the financial products.

Around 43,700 Hong Kong people invested nearly 15.7 billion HK dollars (2.02 billion U.S. dollars) in products issued or guaranteed by Lehman Brothers before it collapsed in September 2008.

Most of these products were called mini-bonds, although they were not bonds but complex and high-risk structured products. When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, many of these products became worthless or nearly worthless.

In response to the report, the city government said in a statement that the scope and magnitude of the global financial crisis in 2008 exceeded the expectations of all parties and the ramifications were cross-sectoral, cross-border and far-reaching.

Following the incident, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Securities and Futures Commission submitted reviews making numerous recommendations.

The city government said it has implemented the recommendations with the Authority and the Commission in the past three years in phases, which cover areas like enhancing the selling practices of investment products, the business conduct of intermediaries, and investor education.

When formulating and implementing financial policies, the city government said it will foster the two main policy objectives of investor protection and financial stability.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority noted the report does not fully take into account information and representations it has submitted, in particular the impact on investors of the sudden collapse of Lehman Brothers and the supervisory actions taken by the authority before the firm collapsed.

The Authority also said it, along with the Commission, facilitated large-scale settlement between banks and investors of minibonds and structured financial products related to Lehman Brothers.

As a result, the majority of investors have been able to recover a significant portion of the money they invested without the need to go through lengthy and costly legal processes governing civil litigation of that nature.

According to the latest figures released by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, over 99 percent of 21,856 Lehman- Brothers- related complaint cases has been completed while the remaining 39 cases were still under investigation.

Of those finished complaint cases, 15,769 cases which have been resolved by a settlement agreement, 3,451 cases which have been resolved through the enhanced complaint handling procedures, 2,501 cases were closed because of insufficient prima facie evidence of misconduct, 25 cases which are under disciplinary consideration.

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