The technology-laden NASDAQ stock market still regards China as an important strategic region, in response to earlier reports that it would withdraw from the country.

Peter Yandle, a spokesman for NASDAQ's international business section in London, said his company would devote more efforts to tapping China's potentials and appoint a president for the Asia-Pacific region, who will be responsible for finding a chief representative for its China office in the coming months.

"We see China as such an important and developing market, and we should have additional resources locally," Yandle said during a phone interview.

He denied that NASDAQ will shift its focus to the US domestic market and stop the process of opening a formal office in China, which was reported to be said by former NASDAQ's chief representative in China, Harry Huang.

Huang left his position due to "a strategic change at NASDAQ."

Before that, Huang and his assistant were the only two staff members in NASDAQ's Shanghai preparatory office, which was established in 1998.

Yandle said NASDAQ will accelerate its development in the United States to make it a dominant stock exchange there, but it will also develop new businesses in Europe and Asia.

But he did not say how many people the representative office will have and when that will formally open.

The world's largest electronic stock market has four overseas offices, based in London, Tokyo, Shanghai and Bangalore, India.

Yandle believed China's significant and sustained economic growth is a very attractive factor for capital markets, including the NASDAQ exchange.

He did not think the launch of a small and medium board on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China will reduce the attraction NASDAQ holds for Chinese firms, because many Chinese companies will want to enjoy high visibility and an enhanced profile in the world with a NASDAQ listing.

Fang Xingdong, an industry analyst in Beijing, also believed the NASDAQ exchange will remain a good choice for companies aiming to make initial public offerings (IPOs), as some types of stocks are not fully tradable on Chinese stock exchanges and investors and founders of companies cannot exit from their companies freely now.

Yandle said the main functions of NASDAQ's representative office will be to support Chinese companies which are already listed on the exchange and to introduce new companies to the stock market in New York.

There are nine Chinese companies listed on the US stock market, not including Hong Kong's Chinadotcom and UTStarcom, a telecom equipment vendor mainly operating in China and founded by Chinese citizens.

In the past five months, three new firms from China made their IPOs on the NASDAQ exchange.

Yandle said there are four companies in the process of setting up IPOs on the NASDAQ exchange, but he declined to name them.

Nine is a relatively small number for a country like China, so there will be more IPOs from China in coming years, according to Yandle.

He added that although most of the listed companies are Internet firms, there would be more from other sectors.

Fang said the Internet sector is the most internationally competitive technology business in China, so it is natural that most of the NASDAQ-listed companies are from that sector and more Internet companies are planning IPOs on the NASDAQ exchange.

(China Daily June 1, 2004)