BEIJING WILL finally start allowing foreign companies to list in China, reflecting its ambitions to open up the country’s financial sector and transform Shanghai into an international financial centre.
“I think some time early next year we will have one or two foreign companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange,” Fang Xinghai, director general of the Shanghai government’s Financial Services Office, said yesterday.
“Very likely, the Shanghai Stock Exchange will get an international board, and would be subject to a different set of listing rules, which would suit foreign companies and which would also make sure that there will be adequate information for Chinese investors.” The market regulator controlled by the central government must sign off on the decision. But Mr Fang said this was “the likely outcome”.
The plans follow an announcement by the finance ministry this week that the country would sell Rmb6 billion (€602 million) of bonds in Hong Kong this month to “improve the international status” of its currency. Some multinational companies have also signalled that they would be interested in issuing shares in mainland China.
“We will definitely want to do it,” Stephen Green, HSBC’s chairman, said at the bank’s first-half results conference in Hong Kong last month.
Mr Fang said foreign listings would start with a pilot phase, an approach China has often taken in the past 30 years to test market reforms before adopting them more broadly.
