Following China's top oil producer's purchase of the shares of its four subsidiaries on April 7, the regrouping of A-share firms by their parent companies has been launched nationwide.

 

The move of the Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) represents one of the four models of A-share firms' regrouping by their parent stated-owned enterprises (SOEs). The other models include transfer of A-share firms among SOEs, high-quality assets injection into A-share firms, and merger of A-share firms.

 

Thanks to the regrouping of central government SOE, share price of the central government SOE-held listed firms achieved an excess income of more than 30 percent from the end of 2005, said Yang Weicong with the Lianhe Securities.

 

According to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), the current 167 central SOEs in China, including 87 ones with listed firms, will be regrouped into 80 to 100 competent corporations in one or two years, and each new corporation should focus its core business on no more than three of the 21 sectors prescribed by the SASAC.

 

According to analysts, the key purpose of Sinopec's purchase is to consolidate its leading role in the domestic oil market. This is a problem facing all central SOEs, because those who fail to become the top three in their fields will be taken off the list of central SOEs by October 2007.

 

The 23 A-share firms in the aerospace sector and the nine A-share firms in the communication sector are the most likely to be purchased, analysts said. In fact, the Hong Kong-listed Aerospace Science and Technology's recent purchase of its parent company's two subsidiaries marked the first step in the aerospace sector in this respect.

 

The central SOEs also witness the trend of injecting high-quality assets into their A-share subsidiaries, which may lead to substantial lift of the central SOEs' status in the stock market.

 

Statistics show that the net assets yield rate of the central SOEs-owned A-share firms was 3.42 percent in the third quarter of 2005. In contrast, the net asset yield rate of entire central government SOEs of the year reached 9.7 percent, much more than that of the 1,400 listed companies on China's stock market.

 

The central SOEs, following the SASAC's requirement to shorten the management chain and improve corporate governance, are restructuring the assets of their A-share subsidiaries to simplify the structure their shareholders.

 

At present, only one third of about 200 A-share firms are directly owned by central SOEs. The others are owned by several central SOEs and their subsidiaries. Unclear ownership, according to SASAC, is the major hindrance for sound corporate governance of the listed firms.

 

(Xinhua News Agency April 11, 2006)