Warrants Allowed in PRC Securities Markets
July 19th, 2005China has announced it will allow some listed firms to issue warrants. An English language China Daily story is here.
The report indicates warrants may be used to “compensate” holders of tradeable shares when a firm makes its non-tradeable shares tradeable.
The new warrants policy was announced by both the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges today (neither exchange is an SRO in a meaningful sense—they are subordinate to central policy makers, enforce the same listing standards and often make simultaneous policy announcements).
The SZSE announcement (in Chinese) is here. It contains links to a reporters’ Q&A with unnamed “responsible persons” at the exchanges and to the policy itself.
I don’t see the same material on the SHSE site yet. (They have something posted about a “virtual” warrants competition), but Sina posts the SHSE policy here. It has the same 45 articles as the SZSE warrants policy.
“Warrant” is translated into Chinese as 权证 or quan zheng, which has the literal sense of evidence of a right, the right in this case being to buy or sell securities at a set price.