The much anticipated Star market will kick off on July 22, the SSE has announced. There will be 25 companies listed on that day, according to the notice.
“After eight months of efficient and orderly preparation, the first batch of tech board companies are ready and the time is ripe,” an SSE spokesperson said.
In other news, the SSE may ban China Galaxy Securities, a leading onshore securities brokerage, from “offline” subscription of new shares on the Star market for six months after the firm provided a valid offering price for precision instrument manufacturer Suzhou TZTEK’s IPO but did not purchase any of its shares. The “offline” bookbuilding process for listings is reserved for institutional investors.
China Galaxy Securities is a state-owned firm. It did not specify a reason for its withdrawal.
According to SSE rules, companies who withdraw requests to buy shares of IPOs after participating in the price inquiry process will be banned from placing subscriptions offline to any new IPOs for six months.
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China’s FX reserves rose by $18.2bn to $3.12tr in June, the highest since May 2018, according to data published by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Monday.
“The recovery of China’s FX reserve was partially the result of favourable valuation effect due to the weak broad dollar in June,” Xie Dongming, head of Greater China research at OCBC Bank, said. “Meanwhile, the gradual capital inflows into China’s financial market is supportive of China’s FX reserve as well.”
In June, China’s holdings in gold continued to increase, reaching $87.3bn by the end of the month. OCBC’s Xie said it was a way to balance out the country’s decreasing US Treasuries holdings.
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China’s securities regulator CSRC will restart giving approvals for the establishment of domestically funded securities firms, according to an official notice last Friday.
Local media Caixin reported that this will be the first time since 2008 that a brokerage house purely owned by mainland-based investors is again up for approval by the CSRC. The last such brokerage house was Beijing-based Dongxing Securities, owned by China Orient Asset Management, Aluminium Corp of China and Dasheng Asset Co.
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The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission is considering increasing the cap on insurance companies’ investments in equities. Currently, the regulator allows each insurer to invest up to 30% of total assets in equities, local media Caixin reported on July 5.
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HP and Dell are planning to relocate 30% of their laptop production out of China due to the trade war, the Nikkei Asian Review reported last week .
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Sony and Nintendo are also considering the same.
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Bank of China issued preferred shares worth a whopping Rmb73bn ($10.6bn) last Thursday. The deal was rated AA+. It was the first time this year that a Chinese state-owned large commercial bank has issued preferred shares. But more importantly, the deal was the biggest additional tier one capital issuance in the world, according to an official statement by BOC on Friday.
The issuance will increase BOC’s tier one capital ratio by 0.55%.
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HSBC Bank received SSE’s approval to become a cross-border GDR conversion institution for the London-Shanghai Stock Connect, according to a Friday notice by the Shanghai bourse.
Other than HSBC, six financial institutions have obtained the status. They are Barclays, China International Capital Corp (UK), Haitong International (UK), CLSA (UK), JP Morgan Securities and ICBC Standard Bank.