About 25 percent of Hong Kong's planned initial public offerings have been canceled by 2026, the most since the 2008 financial crisis, Bloomberg reported. Since the beginning of the year, at least 78 companies have rejected or completely withdrawn their IPO applications. The decrease in activity is due to investor caution regarding the field of artificial intelligence, a drop in the Hang Seng index by 8.2% and increased control over the quality of transactions by local regulators.