Lock-up shares worth 44b yuan to become tradable

BEIJING - Lock-up shares worth about 43.7 billion yuan ($7.1 billion) will become eligible for trade on China's stock market?this week, which will test the market's resilience amid thin trading and continuing losses for most shares.

The amount was less than half of the worth of shares unlocked in the past week, which surpassed 90 billion yuan.

Around 2.3 billion shares from 26 companies will become tradable on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses between Aug 3 and 7, according to Southwest Securities.

Under China's market rules, major shareholders of non-tradable stocks are subject to one or two years of lock-up before they are permitted to trade.

Soochow Securities Co, Ltd will see non-tradable shares worth around 10.1 billion yuan become tradable on the Shanghai stock exchange on Aug 5, the largest number of such shares to hit the stock market in the period.

Chinese shares extended declines Friday on investors' caution in the shadow of the earlier market stampede, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dropping 1.13 percent to close at 3,663.73 points. The turnover of the two bourses came in at 878.08 billion yuan, sharply lower than the 1.1 trillion yuan on the previous trading day.