China's stock market regulator has set up a new committee to boost the overseeing of mergers and acquisitions by listed companies with a view to fully exerting influence to promote the allocation of resources.
The committee, which oversees M&As and corporate restructurings under the China Securities Regulatory Commission, is on track to improve the work quality and transparency of approval for M&As of existing listed firms, the CSRC said in a Website statement late on Wednesday.
M&As have been the main theme of the capital market, serving as an effective method of making listed companies stronger and more competitive, leading to better resource allocation, said Shang Fulin, the chairman of the CSRC, in the statement.
In the past ten years, more than 300 listed companies have improved their fundamental standing through M&As and have achieved sustainable development, Shang said.
Assets injected to mainland publicly traded companies through M&As totaled 73.9 billion yuan (US$10.3 billion) last year, bolstering the companies' market value by 770 billion yuan and boosting average earnings per share by 75 percent, Shang added.
In recent years, the CSRC has been playing a positive role in promoting the construction of market fundamentals. The capital markets have seen breakthrough growth and the quality of listed companies has steadily improved, according to the statement.
As listed firms have wrapped up programs to convert their non-tradable shares, there has been an increasingly dynamic trend towards M&As, which are being conducted in a more innovative and complex way, said the statement.
The establishment of the new committee is part of the CSRC's improved efforts to promote market-based M&A movement with an aim to keep up with the rapid changes in the stock market and to further solidify the basis for healthy market growth, it said.
The committee should be a responsible gatekeeper which will allow high quality resources and trustworthy shareholders to enter the market and at the same time block dishonest traders, Shang said.