(Agencies)
BEIJING: China will encourage foreign-funded firms to make share offerings in China, a senior Ministry of Commerce official said on Thursday during a wide-ranging briefing where he also flagged that annual declines in exports and imports began to improve in June.
China has talked for at least a decade about allowing foreign firms to list shares domestically, but has made little progress on the initiative.
“We will continue to work with other departments on policies regarding domestic IPOs of foreign firms to actively guide high-quality foreign firms to make IPOs in China,” Chen Jian, a vice-commerce minister, told reporters.
HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, could be in the running to be the first to list.
The bank, with a Shanghai branch office that opened some 150 years ago, has gained a lot of goodwill for promising not to sell its strategic investment in Bank of Communications while other foreign banks rushed to the exits.
China Daily for more