Netizens cry for IPO suspension

BEIJING -- The badly performing stock market is driving Chinese investors to vent their frustration and anger online, calling for a suspension in the initial public offerings, which they believed is behind the lackluster performance.

A widely-circulated article, first posted on the popular Chinese website www.tianya.cn, called for netizens to sign an e-petition for the suspension of IPOs.

Urging the security watchdog to stop companies using IPOs to maliciously seize money from the market, the author "Chanlunxiaozhang" wrote, "endless IPOs have severely hurt the interests of Chinese investors, and the country's stock market is on the brink of a collapse."

As of 3 pm Thursday, the post had attracted nearly 200,000 readers and more than 10,000 of them had signed the petition.

"Why should investors suffer the losses, which should have been suffered by listed companies because of their regulation violation, poor management or even fraud?" posted "zg201212" on the forum. "Cherish your lives, away from Chinese stocks," another user "Ahuatian205" joked.

The topic was also simmering on China's twitter-like microblog website weibo.com. "IPO suspension will be the best solution to boost the stock market", "Gaoshandahai" wrote, saying the Chinese stock market was like a bull drained of its blood.

China's stock market has been shaken this year over concerns of a deepening slowdown in the national economy amid the global downturn. The key Shanghai index has declined more than 10 percent from its peak in February.

The country's GDP expanded 7.6 percent in the second quarter of the year, down sharply from 9.5 percent a year earlier and half a point below the 8.1 percent rise for the first three months of this year.

An online survey by news portal Sina.com showed 96.9 percent out of the 133,341 respondents believed that the poor performance of the stock market was partly due to continuous IPOs, while 91.8 percent think an IPO pause will help shore up the market.

However, some other commentators expressed different opinions, saying that suspending IPOs is irrational and harmful to investors' benefits in the long term.

"It (IPOs suspension) is not the right option" as the problem does not lie in the IPOs, but the IPO overpricing of substandard companies, said Zheng Mingwei with the Shenzhen-based Jingtian law firm.

China Securities Regulatory Commission also hinted an IPO suspension was unlikely.

"Suspending IPO launches is an administrative action, which should be avoided as the country continues to reform new share issuance regulations," the CSRC's investor protection bureau said in a statement.

The bureau noted the stock market decline was due to a lack of investor confidence during global and domestic economic difficulties, but not a result of liquidity strains.

"Previous experience has proved that an IPO suspension will have no substantive bearing on boosting the market," it said.

Regulators will consider administrative measures to shore up the market under "extreme conditions", but perhaps not now, said Jin Shaohua, an analyst with the Guolian Securities.

Despite the CSRC remarks, however, the commission has quietly slowed the pace of IPO reviews this month. In the first two weeks of July, CSRC reviewed IPO applications of four companies, compared to a monthly average of 32 companies in the first half of this year.

China implemented a nine-month hold-up on IPO listings since September 2008 as the stock market slumped. Most investors attributed the slump to a vicious cycle where the large number of IPOs at the time drained liquidity.

To regulate the stock market, CSRC has issued a string of policies since late 2011 after Guo Shuqing took office as CSRC chairman. These included improving the delisting system for companies listed on the second board, requiring listed companies to pay dividends and working to eliminate illegal activities in stock markets.