It is only a "matter of time" before the London Metal Exchange begins working toward publishing data on the speculative wagers made by traders on its platform, the chief executive of the exchange's parent company said on Monday.

"In the end we have to figure out how to do it to make sure the information that people wanted to see is available from a technology perspective, from a confidentiality perspective, from any other perspective," Charles Li, chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, said at the start of LME Week, the annual gathering here of the base-metals industry.