June Chen
At least 23 mainland companies including Sinopec (0386), China Merchants Shekou and Zhejiang Jiahua Energy Chemical Industry disclosed yesterday they have signed agreements with banks to obtain loans for share buybacks.
Sinopec's controlling shareholder, Sinopec Group, has signed a credit agreement with Bank of China (3988) on a 700-million-yuan (HK$766 million) bank credit line to raise its shareholdings under the scheme.
Three mainland-listed companies have obtained loans of over 1 billion yuan.
Several companies moved to announce their repurchase plans yesterday, before trading opens today.
Cosco Shipping (1919) said it will commit a maximum of 2 billion yuan to repurchase from the market 50 million to 100 million A shares for up to 20 yuan per share.
Cosco Shipping Development (2866) will also set aside 144 million to 287 million yuan to buy back from the market 40 million to 80 million A shares for up to 3.59 yuan apiece.
Meanwhile, the two companies plan to repurchase a number of H shares at the same time pursuant to the general mandate to repurchase H Shares, which is not required to be submitted to the general meeting of the company for consideration and approval.
Meanwhile, the China Securities Regulatory Commission met yesterday, making some specific suggestions in relation to in-depth reforms of the capital market.
The commission said authorities would further enhance the "inclusiveness and adaptability" of the capital market to encourage more high-quality technology enterprises to go public.
This came after the city's stock market rebounded last Friday with the Hang Seng Index climbing 3.61 percent to 20,804 points in the wake of stimulus measures announced by mainland authorities recently.
In a separate development, President Xi Jinping urged the country's state-level economic and technological development zones to continuously stimulate "innovation vitality and endogenous momentum" and open up for in-depth reform and high-quality development.
Xi made the comment after a recent visit to Anhui province and ahead of the NPC standing committee meeting end of this month, which is expected more economic stimulus to be unveiled.
In other news, a Sinopec-owned shale oil field in Shandong reported the daily oil production of a shale well reached a record of 262.8 tonnes, a sign that the amount of oil reserves in the field could be as high as 10.5 billion tonnes.
Sinopec has won a 700-million-yuan credit line. bLOOMBERG
