SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s new Beijing Stock Exchange has approved applications from 10 companies to list shares on Nov. 15, company filings showed late on Wednesday, two months after Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the bourse for small and medium-sized firms.
The companies, currently listed on the so-called “innovation tier” of Beijing’s over-the-counter National Equities Exchange and Quotations, known as the ‘New Third Board’, said in separate statements their shares will be listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange next Monday.
The companies include Beijing Henghe Information Technology Co, Keda Automation Control and Anhui Jingsai Technology Co.
China’s securities regulator has said the new exchange will complement existing bourses in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Investors are expecting a busy start to trade in light of frothy launches of other boards, such as Shanghai’s STAR Market https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-markets-star-idUSKCN1UH03G in 2019.
A set of rules for the Beijing Stock Exchange was published last month. Individual investors qualified to trade must have at least 500,000 yuan ($77,459) of assets in their stock accounts.
“It underscores the speed and efficiency in launching the Beijing Stock Exchange,” said Zhou Yunnan, a veteran investor in the New Third Board, on which the new bourse is based.
“It’s imperative to launch the bourse, which is tasked with deepening China’s capital market reforms,” he added.
China has stepped up support for small and medium-sized enterprises struggling in a slowing economy, while cracking down on tech giants under President Xi’s objective of “common prosperity”, a policy drive to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
The Beijing bourse will employ a registration-based initial public offering (IPO) mechanism, which paves the way for the rollout of the listing system on China’s main boards, Morgan Stanley said.
Currently, only Shenzhen’s ChiNext, and Shanghai’s tech-focused STAR Market have adopted a U.S.-style IPO system.
(Reporting by Jason Xue and Andrew Galbraith; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
