China will restart initial public offerings (IPO) after suspending them in July in the wake of this past summer’s stock market rout, the securities regulator said Friday, reported state news agency Xinhua.
Deng Ge, spokesman with the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), told a press conference that 28 companies will be allowed to go public before the end of this year.
After the benchmark stock indexes peaked on June 12, they began a sharp plunge that lasted through most of the summer. In early July, after a month of extreme volatility, both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges said in that 28 scheduled IPOs would be suspended. Among them, 10 companies that had accepted subscriptions for their shares were required to refund the money to investors. By the end of the summer the market had fallen 40%
Xinhua quoted Deng saying that those 10 companies will get back into the IPO process first adding that they may need about two weeks to go through some legal procedures.
“The other 18 companies will go public before the end of this year,” Deng said. The CSRC will also resume IPO approval meetings with reasonable pace.
The stock market has entered a stage of self-restoration and self-adjustment and the IPOs will help invigorate the market to resume and maintain a reasonable supply of new shares, Deng said. The CSRC will further reform IPO policies, he said, offering no specific details.
In addition to suspending the IPOS, China took other extraordinary measures in recent months to prevent more plunges, including a ban on stockholders who hold more than five percent of a listed firm from selling shares, pouring in funds and cracking down on short selling. The CSRC has also cracked down on violations in the securities market.
In the latest move, it has placed administrative monitoring measures on three securities brokers, one fund company and three branches of fund companies, including a ban on opening new securities accounts, Deng said.
The CSRC has stepped up punishment on violations in the new third board, an over-the-counter market for growth enterprises. Investigations into six cases have finished, Deng said.
On Friday, the benchmark Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index rose 1.9% to 3,590, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index jumped 2.8% to 2,152. The small cap Chinext Price Index climbed 3.8% to 2,661.