China's stock market enters new stage

BEIJING—1,014 Chinese companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges have completed shareholding reforms that convert their nontradable shares into tradable shares, the two bourses said in separate announcements Monday.
Beginning Monday, the stocks of these firms will recover their original names, with the prefix "G" removed.
Meanwhile, as a reminder to investors, the prefix "S" will be added to the stock names of the 276 firms on the bourses that have not completed the shareholding reform, the announcements said.
Analysts here said this is an indication that the one-year-old shareholding reform is almost at an end, ushering in a whole new era in China's burgeoning stock market.
Most of China's listed companies were former state-owned enterprises. Even after becoming public firms, they were still controlled by the state, whose majority stocks could not be traded on the bourses.
Not surprisingly, this situation failed to motivate management to improve the performance of their firms. Nor could it provide proper protection for minority investors.
Launched in 2005, the shareholding reform usually involved the distribution of free shares to holders of tradable shares, to compensate for potential losses when formally state-owned shares hit the market after the reform.
The 1,014 firms that have finished the shareholding reform include all the major blue chips. Together they account for over 90 percent of market capitalization.
"Split share ownership has been a major system defect in China's stock market and a major bottleneck hampering further growth. The shareholding reform has laid a solid foundation for revitalizing the stock market," said Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
Observers, however, warned that there remains much to be done to build a fair and efficient stock market in China.
The new market has produced new challenges for the regulators in relation to the improvement of stock issuance, trading and regulating systems, the attraction of more qualified investors and the protection of minority investors, said Hu Zuliu, general manager of Goldman Sachs Group (Asia) Ltd.

- China Daily,  Daily Mail news exchange item