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China to deepen state firm reforms
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-22 17:18

CHINA LISTINGS

Addressing concerns that state firms had listed overseas during a freeze on domestic initial public offerings, Li said the same companies could also raise capital at home in future.

"When we put these enterprises on the overseas market, we have also left room for them to come back and list domestically in the future," he said.

The authorities were advocating listings abroad first and flotations at home later because this would force Chinese companies to meet stricter standards of corporate governance and help them become competitive on a global level. This approach would benefit the domestic stock market in the long run, he said.

China suspended all new domestic listings in May to concentrate on implementing a scheme to float $250 billion in non-traded state shares in firms that are already listed.

But state firms have continued to raise funds overseas, sparking complaints that the dearth of good new companies was pushing the already depressed home market down even further.

Li's comments added to the long-running debate over whether China should allow its best-performing companies to list outside the mainland, said analyst Zheng Weigang at Shanghai Securities.

"Such listings have partly deprived Chinese investors of the right to enjoy the yields of China's quick economic development and have raised doubts as to how important the mainland's own stock exchanges are, in particular the key Shanghai bourse."

SASAC's chief said his agency had made progress in diversifying the ownership of state firms and beefing up their management. As a result, combined profits of the firms SASAC supervises had risen 24.7 percent to 565 billion yuan (US$70 billion) in the first 11 months from a year earlier.

The firms were expected to make a return on assets of 7.3 percent in 2005, up 0.5 percentage point from 2004, SASAC said.

Still, it said some big state firms, of which there were 138,000 in total employing 43 million people, were still slow to respond to market signals and unable to manage their books.


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