Yanzhou delays Huaxia stake sale
(China Daily/HK Edition)
Updated: 2005-04-15 14:00

SHANGHAI: China's top coal producer has postponed a planned auction of a 6.9 per cent stake in Huaxia Bank after a last-minute decision to let foreign firms bid, its auctioneer said yesterday.

Yanzhou Coal Mining hoped to unload 289 million non-traded institutional shares for at least 2.92 yuan each today, raising more than 800 million yuan (US$97 million), Shandong Yinxing Auction said earlier this month.

That price represented a 26 per cent discount to its publicly traded share price and about 1.3 times the lender's book value.

"We've been told by our client to halt the auction," a senior executive with Yinxing Auction told Reuters, declining to say when the auction would be held.

Yinxing said in a statement foreign participants would need to lodge a deposit of US$6 million and have assets of at least US$10 billion, and must have posted profits for the past two years. Whichever company buys the shares would instantly become Huaxia's fourth-largest shareholder.

Foreign banks are racing to tap US$1.5 trillion in nationwide savings by buying into the likes of Minsheng Banking or Shenzhen Development Bank - but it was initially unclear whether they would get a crack at Huaxia. Analysts have questioned the rush, wondering why foreign banks would buy stakes in sprawling, scandal-ridden entities that they would not control.

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