The Chinese government will push the reform of the Shenzhen stock exchange’s growth enterprise market (GEM) board and launch a pilot registration system for listing candidates.
The latest moves were aimed at deepening the reform, improving the fundamentals and enhancing the functions of the capital market.
The announcement came after a meeting of the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reform Commission, chaired by Party Secretary Xi Jinping, on Monday.
China will create a standardized, transparent and open capital market and push forward the fundamental reforms of issuance, listing, information disclosure, trading and delisting systems of the GEM board.
In the past, it was very difficult to list and delist a company on the GEM board. After the reforms, the procedures to list and delist a company will be simplified. Earnings requirements for GEM companies will also be loosened as these new businesses usually have a long investment period.
A set of new rules will be released by the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange soon.
Software industry
China’s software companies saw their combined revenue down 6.2% to 1.41 trillion yuan (US$200.09 billion) in the first quarter of this year from one year ago. The net profit of these firms fell 13.1% to 166.7 billion yuan.
The country’s software sector was hit by the Covid-19 outbreak as software companies’ revenue, profits, exports and workers’ salaries decreased significantly in the first three months of this year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Technical services and tendering projects were suspended due to the epidemic.
Household appliances
Total retail sales of China’s household appliances declined 35.8% to 120.4 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier, according to the China Electronic Information Industry Development Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Offline appliance sales dropped 51.6% to 57.8 billion yuan from 119.5 billion yuan. Online sales decreased 2% to 62.6 billion yuan from 63.9 billion yuan, representing 52% of total retail sales. It was the first time that online sales contributed more than half of the total sales.
Company news
Guizhou Maotai, a Chinese liquor maker, said its net profit rose 16.4% to 13.16 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year from the same period last year. Revenue grew 12.76% to 24.41 billion yuan.
Huaxia Bank, a Shanghai-listed company, said it had gained approval from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) to set up a wealth management arm, Huaxia Wealth Management Co Ltd. The company said it will seek another approval from the CBIRC when the new unit is ready to commence operations.
The Bank of China said in a statement on Monday that it had adjusted some of its foreign currency spread for its Wai Hui Bao, or literally “foreign exchange treasury,” products for the period between this Monday and Friday due to extra volatility in the global forex market. The bank urged its customers to beware of market risks.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China said it had stopped opening positions for the trading of commodities including crude oil, natural gas, copper and soybean from Tuesday. The bank said customers can still close and transfer positions.
Alibaba Group said Jiang Fan, one of its 36 partners, had been removed from his position due to an “improper handling of family problems,” which had a negative impact on the company’s reputation. Jiang, reportedly a rising star at Alibaba, was demoted from senior group vice-president to group vice-president and forfeited his bonuses for the last financial year.
Jiang had previously apologized for an alleged extramarital affair and said he was willing to face an internal inquiry by the company.
The story was written by Wang Xiaohan and Yang Zhijie and first published at ATimesCN.com. It was translated into English by Nadeem Xu.