How it started
History
The Mass Transit Railway Corporation (Chinese: 地下鐵路公司) was established on 22 September 1972 as a government-owned statutory corporation to build and operate a mass transit railway system to meet Hong Kong's public transport needs. On 30 June 2000, the MTRC was succeeded by the MTR Corporation Limited (MTRCL, 地下鐵路有限公司). As with the MTRC, the MTRCL's principal business is to operate the mass transit railway system. Following a successful initial public offering (IPO), the MTRCL was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 5 October 2000, although the government is still the majority stakeholder in the MTRCL.
Partial privatisation
On 11 September 2000, the financial secretary of the Hong Kong Government, Sir Donald Tsang, announced the partial privatisation of MTR Corporation Limited. The offering was for one billion shares, but this was increased to 1.15 billion due to high demand. On 5 October 2000, the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with 600,000 shareholders. In June 2001, MTR was added to the Hang Seng Index.
At the time of the IPO, the company was operating with a surplus of HK$360 million (US$46.1 million), which had increased from a surplus of HK$278 million (US$35.6 million) in 1997. The MTR has continued to be one of the few profitable public transport systems in the world. In 2024, according to internal business documents, MTR had a net profit of HK$15.8 billion (US$2 billion).
MTR–KCR merger
From Wikipedia’s article on MTR Corporation Limited, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2