Walter Hutchens’ Blog

The bid of CITIC Securities, a division of financial conglomerate CITIC, to acquire the smaller GF Securities company will apparently be blocked, according to this report from the China Daily, a PRC-based English language paper. First the employees of the target and now some other shareholders are resisting the bid.

The China Daily is not independent of the PRC government. Indeed, no PRC papers are in the sense that censors can influence all of them. But the China Daily nonetheless publishes some stuff of value. This story for example candidly notes:

CITIC’s move is regarded by some observers as a rare market-driven acquisition attempt in the domestic securities industry, which is facing troubles in making profits and improving efficiency.

Normally such mergers and acquisitions follow administrative orders, but the market is lacking commercial cases of this nature.

The article includes a lot of good detail on the current takeover battle and also notes CITIC Securities is the first PRC securities firm to have conducted its own IPO.