Hong Kong is generally recognised as being the ‘third leg’, together with New York and London, that keeps the global financial markets operating round the clock.  Hong Kong’s stock market is highly internationalised with a large number of stocks. As of June 2010, there were 1,344 companies listed on the stock exchange, including 175 companies on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) with a total market capitalisation of US$2.2 trillion.