China to launch Nasdaq-style second board

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-31 11:26

China's planned trading board for start-ups moved a step closer to creation after regulators approved listing rules for companies.

The new rules, first issued in draft form a year ago, were published Tuesday on the website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and become effective May 1. The statement didn't say when the second board of the country's southern Shenzhen Stock Exchange will begin operations.

Analysts say it may take a few weeks longer for the new board to kick off with enough companies meeting the requirements and beginning to raise funds. Exchange officials have been quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as saying that the new board needs at least eight companies as the first batch of listings to be launched officially.

China's board for small and medium-sized companies to raise cash has been under consideration by authorities since late 1990s, but the process was delayed after the bursting of the global dotcom bubble in 2000. Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said in January the bourse would be set up in 2009.

Listing candidates will need annual net income of at least 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in the previous two years, or 5 million yuan in the most recent year with sales of at least 50 million yuan, the statement said.

China to launch Nasdaq-style second board

A man monitors an electronic screen at a brokerage house in Shanghai March 17, 2009. [Agencies]

In comparison, the rules for China's main-board IPOs in the eastern Shanghai Stock Exchange require companies to make consecutive profits over the past three years, with combined net income of no less than 30 million yuan.

The main-board rules also have other restrictions such as companies must have an accumulative net cash flow of at least 50 million yuan over the past three years and accumulative operational income of at least 300 million yuan.

Premier Wen Jiabao said last year he wants to set up a bourse similar to the Nasdaq Stock Market for start-ups, to facilitate fund-raising by small businesses as banks focus on lending to large state-owned enterprises. The plan has been on hold since China's stock market plunged 65 percent last year.

Regulators have completed preparations for a start-up board, Ouyang Zehua, vice director of the watchdog's supervision department, said on March 4 in Beijing. The board will list more than eight companies when it goes into operation, Chen Dongzheng, president of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, said on March 8.

To meet the fund-raising demand by start-ups as its economy expanded rapidly, China launched the Small and Medium Enterprise Board on the Shenzhen bourse in 2004, which now has over 200 companies listed. It has looser regulations than the main board but stricter ones than the coming second board.

The urgency for China to establish a second board gained momentum in 2008 when the global financial crisis slowed the economy sharply, and worries over defaults and consequent rises in non-performing loans made Chinese banks increasingly reluctant to lend to small companies.