Hong Kong stocks closed 3.09 percent lower Monday following a sharp drop in share prices in mainland China on growing concerns about a slowdown in the world's second-largest economy. The benchmark Hang Seng index slipped 776.55 points to 24,351.96 on turnover of HK$116.25 billion (US $14.99 billion).
Falling share prices in Hong Kong came on the back of a fourth-straight sell-off on Wall Street. The declines in Hong Kong also appeared to tie closely to falls on mainland stock exchanges on Monday, with the Shanghai Composite Index dropping 8.48 percent and the Shenzhen Composite Index, which tracks stocks on China's second exchange, falling 7.00 percent. The falls came as economic data in China caused sentiment to turn, despite government efforts to prop up the stock market following a rout that began last month, dealers said.
On Monday, the mainland government said that profits of major industrial firms slipped 0.3 percent year-on-year in June to 588.57 billion yuan. On Friday, the preliminary reading of Caixin's Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) - an independent survey of manufacturing activity - came in at 48.2 for July, the weakest reading since 48.1 in April 2014. Officials have unveiled a slew of measures, including a police crackdown on short-selling and a ban on big shareholders selling stock for six months, to avert a slump which began in mid-June.
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