Gov’t unveils new measures to prop up stocks 

In a flurry of new moves to halt a stock market slide, China›s government yesterday told state companies and corporate executives to buy shares, raised the amount of equities insurance companies can hold and promised more credit to finance trading.
Hundreds of companies have announced a halt to trading in their shares after emergency measures announced last weekend failed to stop a slide that has dragged down the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index by more than 30 percent since early June.
Despite the new measures, the Shanghai index lost another 5.9 percent yesterday.
The decline threatens to fuel political tensions and set back Communist Party plans to use financial markets to make China’s state-dominated economy more productive. The party wants to encourage stock ownership but small investors whose holdings have plunged in value say they will no longer buy shares.
“The central government made considerable reputational investment in the rally over the last year, particularly via ample cheerleading from state media,” said IHS Global Insight economist Brian Jackson in a report. “As a result, support is likely to remain extraordinary, although that will find difficulty reversing the rapid shift in attitudes by retail investors.”
Yesterday, the Cabinet agency that oversees China’s biggest state-owned companies said it had told them not to sell shares and to buy more “in order to safeguard market stability.”
In a separate order, the securities regulator told directors, executives and senior managers of publicly traded companies who have sold shares in those companies within the past six months to buy them back and said they are barred from selling. It said they are required to buy more if the price falls by more than 30 percent in the next 10 days.
The insurance regulator said the proportion of their assets Chinese insurers are allowed to invest in stocks will be increased to 40 percent from 30 percent. The agency said the amount of a single blue-chip company’s shares that an insurance company can buy will be increased to 10 percent from 5 percent.
The central bank said it will provide “ample liquidity to support stock market stability” through a state-owned company that lends to brokerages to finance share purchases, a practice known as margin lending. The People’s Bank of China gave no indication how much money it might inject into the system.
The central bank statement was read on state TV’s national midday news.
Chinese authorities have tried to reassure investors the price decline is normal following a boom that saw the Shanghai index soar by more than 150 percent since late 2014. On Monday, the flagship ruling party newspaper, People’s Daily, said the economy can maintain steady growth and provide “solid fundamentals” for “healthy development of capital markets.”
The market boom began after state media said last year stocks were cheap, which led investors to believe Beijing would prevent prices from falling. It has made profits for some traders but many novice investors who piled in just before the peak hold shares that are worth less than they paid.
Jackson, of IHS Global Insight, noted a survey by the Southwestern University of Finance found 8.8 percent of households participated in stock market in the second quarter of this year, up from 6.1 percent in the first quarter.
“That confirms that a substantial number of households rushed in just as valuations were peaking, but also that the total exposure of private households in China is relatively low compared to Western countries, where often a third or more participate in equity markets,” he said.
The emergency measures announced so far are aimed at shoring up share prices of major state-owned companies, while smaller and private companies have received little support.
A weekend pledge by state-owned brokerages to buy blue-chip stocks helped to boost prices of government companies such as PetroChina Ltd., Asia’s biggest oil and gas producer. But shares in smaller companies have fallen.
That has prompted hundreds of companies to ask the mainland’s two exchanges to suspend trading in their shares after prices of some fell by more than 50 percent. Dozens with shares traded in Hong Kong also have requested suspensions.
Some 787 companies had suspended trade on the exchanges in Shanghai and the southern city of Shenzhen by the end of trading Tuesday, according to the newspaper China Business News. It said more asked to be suspended later Tuesday, raising the total to more than 1,000.
That would be almost 36 percent of the total of 2,802 companies traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
In Hong Kong, shares in which trading was suspended included Sinopec, the country’s No. 2 state-owned oil company. Joe McDonald, Business Writer, Beijing , AP

hk stock index down 8.5 pct amid china sell-off

Hong Kong’s main stock index plummeted as much as 8.5 percent yesterday as a sell-off in mainland Chinese shares accelerated despite new measures to support the market. The China rout also battered investor sentiment elsewhere in Asia, with other major markets finishing sharply lower. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled in the last hour of trading, a victim of the turmoil in mainland Chinese markets, where stocks have been sliding for three weeks despite increasingly desperate measures by authorities to stem the decline. The Hong Kong index trimmed its losses in the final minutes of trading to close 5.9 percent lower at 23,516.56. “Everyone has come back to reality. The so-called bull market is over for now,” said Jackson Wong, an associate director at United Simsen Securities Ltd.