NYSE To China Telecom Giants Delist On Trump Rule Order

The New York Stock Exchange said it would begin the process of handing over China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom Hong Kong to comply with an action order issued by the Trump administration. The companies will be suspended from trading between January 7 and January 11.

All three companies in Hong Kong have listings, and the NYSE said they have a right to review the decision.

The action order signed by Donald Trump on Nov. 12 bans U.S. investments in Chinese companies that Washington says are owned or controlled by Chinese militants.

“China is increasingly taking advantage of U.S. capital to make resources and to allow the development and upgrading of its weapons, intelligence and other security facilities, which continues to threaten the PRC directly to the United States, ”the order said.

The order was intended to cut U.S. investors from buying the stocks of 31 Chinese companies which the Department of Defense declared in late August as tied to Chinese weapons.

The NYSE announcement, released late on New Year’s Eve, comes at a time of escalating tensions between China and the U.S. The two countries have been embroiled in a trade war for more than a dozen years. two years.

Chinese companies trading on stock exchanges in the US have been following Alibaba’s lead in making high-end listings in Hong Kong. Shares of the e-commerce company began trading in Hong Kong in November 2019, five years after it debuted on the NYSE.

Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing had adopted earlier rules that allowed companies to list with different classes of shares, clearing the way for Alibaba and other Chinese technical companies to sell shares in the city.

Alibaba rival JD.com and game giant NetEase registered their shares in Hong Kong in June this year. KPMG had previously said that the city ‘s stock exchange would become the second largest IPO market in the world in 2020 after raising $ 50 billion in new listings.