Shanghai government is trying to create a blockbuster equity exchange by merging three major local institutions engaged in equity and technology stock transfer operations.

Initiated by the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the move is expected to help create an effective platform to further facilitate Shanghai's reform of State-owned enterprise (SOE) ownership; and also as a signal encouraging the inflow of domestic private and foreign investors into the local equity market before it evolves into a national-level equity transfer exchange.

Local authorities are revising the city's equity transaction administrative regulation, enacted in 1998, to provide a sound legal framework for future activities of the new establishment.

"The merger is currently under way, and the new exchange will take shape very soon," said Zhang Hailong, president of the Shanghai Assets and Equity Exchange (SAEE), a public institution set up in 1996.

Sources from the Shanghai Equity Transaction Administration Office described the merger - involving SAEE, Shanghai Technology Stock Exchange (STSE) and Shanghai Technical Transfer Exchange (STTE) - as "unprecedented", although some cities like Wuhan of Hubei Province and Beijing are also planning similar mergers.

SAEE and STSE, the latter set up in 1999 as a corporate entity, are the two major local organizations handling corporate equity transactions, while STTE is mainly engaged in technology-involved transfer activities with a relatively-marginal operation scale.

Statistics from SAEE indicate equity transfer deals worth some 108 billion yuan (US$13 billion) were sealed last year, and the figure is expected to soar to about 150 billion yuan (US$18 billion) this year.

At STSE, the transaction volume this year will amount to about 120 billion yuan (US$14.5 billion), compared with 22 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion) in 2000.

SAEE claimed that transactions involving State holdings of SOEs account for about 80 per cent of its total equity transfer volume, and for STSE, the proportion is around 30 per cent.

"The new exchange represents the right way ahead as it will provide a unified and standardized market with the collaborative - instead of separate - strengths of all the involved parties," said Wang Qing, an official at SAEE's information centre.

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