David Webb on why the GEM is failing Hong Kong

David Webb: A combination of the two. It's tech heavy and internet heavy, due to the timing of its launch in November 1999. But the index base level of 1000 was only calculated in early 2000, right at the top of the tech bubble. Today it's around 180, so the crash clearly reflects the poor performance of the few, large tycoon spin-offs from the point at which they were introduced to the index. Companies like tom.com, SUNeVision, Henderson Cyber etc. These are the companies which dominated the index.