AAX's reopening at the end of this week depends on a capital raise and it may have to resort to legal action if that fails, the Hong Kong exchange said Tuesday.

AAX temporarily shut down on Sunday, saying the failure of an unnamed "third party partner" meant it had to manually verify customer balances before it could make any payouts.

That story is now changed, with a statement posted on the company website saying it was rushing to raise extra capital from its network and across the industry.

"If we are able to inject additional capital by the end of this week, AAX should be able to resume services as usual," the exchange said. "If AAX is unable to secure funding to enable us to restart operations, AAX is committed to initiate legal procedures to secure and ensure the distribution of assets."