China ’Ready’ to Let Foreign Firms Sell Shares
By Bloomberg News - Nov 13, 2011
The Shanghai Stock Exchange said it’s “basically ready” to let foreign issuers sell stock, paving the way for companies from HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) to Coca-Cola Co. (KO) to list in the world’s second-biggest equity market.
Trading should start “as soon as possible when the time is ripe,” Xu Ming, executive vice president in charge of the international stocks board, said in a Nov. 11 interview at the exchange. While there’s no timetable, the exchange has finished work on technological and regulatory requirements, Xu said.
The trading of foreign equities will mark the biggest change for China’s stock market in more than five years and add impetus to Shanghai’s drive to become a global financial center by 2020. It will broaden options for the nation’s 85 million individual investors who are restricted from buying shares abroad by China’s capital controls, with HSBC, Coca-Cola and NYSE Euronext among companies expressing interest in selling stock in Shanghai.
“The internationalization of the securities market will benefit the whole nation and overseas companies are highly motivated,” Xu said.
Listing in China would let foreign companies benefit from higher valuations and give them access to Chinese currency to fund their expansion in the world’s second-biggest economy, Arjuna Mahendran, Singapore-based head of investment strategy for Asia at HSBC Private Bank, overseeing $460 billion globally, said in a June interview.
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