KUALA LUMPUR (June 26): Maybank Investment Bank (Maybank IB) has expanded its product offerings with the launch of its first structured warrants referencing the Hang Seng Index (HSI) futures contracts.

In a statement on Wednesday, the bank said the issuance consists of two pairs of call and put warrants, with tenures of three months expiring on Sept 27, 2024 and four months expiring on Oct 30, 2024 respectively.

The warrants are available for trading on Bursa Malaysia from Wednesday.

Maybank IB officer-in-charge and chief operating officer Tengku Ariff Azhar Tengku Mohamed said with the latest listing, Maybank IB now offers foreign index warrants besides single stock warrants and FBM KLCI index warrants.

“The HSI warrants are a versatile trading instrument offering foreign equity exposure, instant diversification, leverage with low capital outlay, and seamless access via Bursa in a standardised format.

“HSI warrants have been among the top actively traded securities on Bursa so far this year, with some HSI warrants having a five-day average traded volume of up to 150 million units per market day. We believe that this issuance is timely for investors to capitalise on the current momentum in the Hong Kong equity market,” he said.

As of May, the HSI had 82 constituents with large companies like Tencent, HSBC, Alibaba, AIA, Meituan, CCB, China Mobile, ICBC, CNOOC and HKEX representing the top 10.

Maybank IB’s HSI warrants are designed to track the performance of HSI futures contracts.

The call warrants provide investors the opportunity to gain from the appreciation of the HSI, while the put warrants enable investors to profit from its downward movements.

The bank said this provides Malaysian investors an additional avenue to access the performance of some of Hong Kong's largest listed companies without the hassle of having to purchase each constituent along with its weightage in the index.