Hong Kong Defends FX Peg for Fourth Time in Two Weeks

Hong Kong authorities intervened for the fourth time in two weeks to prevent the city’s currency from weakening beyond its official trading band, after previous efforts failed to drain enough liquidity to push up funding costs.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Chinese financial hub’s de-facto central bank, purchased HK$13.3 billion ($1.7 billion) of the local dollar, according to its Bloomberg page on Friday. The HKMA’s three previous rounds of currency defense had cost it a total of HK$59 billion, according to Bloomberg’s calculations of official data.