When it comes to valuing a business as complicated as the London Metal Exchange, you would think the advisers to Hong Kong’s bourse would not have resorted to a kind of numerical feng shui.
Yet the £1.388bn that Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearinghas offered in an agreed bid for the venerable British institution is, whether by accident or design, curiously close to the Asian bourse’s own stock ticker of “388”.
It is a strange twist in a deal that underscores yet again the China factor in the global economy. China accounts for 40 per cent of worldwide demand for metals, and HKEx believes it has a chance to use its connections there to boost Chinese participation on the LME beyond its current 25 per cent level.