Photographer: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images
Chinese oil companies may be next in line for delisting in the US after the New York Stock Exchange said last week that it would remove the Asian nation’s three largest telecom companies.
China’s largest offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd. may be most at risk because it is on the According to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Henik Fung, the Pentagon’s list of companies is owned or controlled by the Chinese military. PetroChina Co. Ltd. And China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., also known as Sinopec, could also be under threat because the energy sector is critical to the Chinese military, he said.
“More Chinese companies could be delisted in the US and the oil companies could come as the next wave,” said Steven Leung, executive director at UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong. At the same time, the impact of removing the telecom companies is likely to be minimal, as they were barely traded in the US and have not raised much money there, he said.
The NYSE said it would scrap telecom operators to comply with a US executive order restricting companies identified as affiliated with the Chinese military. China Mobile Ltd., China Telecom Corp Ltd. and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. would be suspended from trading between January 7 and January 11 and the process to remove them has begun, the exchange said.
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China’s Commerce Ministry responded Saturday, saying the country would take the necessary steps to protect the rights of Chinese companies and that it hoped the two countries could work together to create a fair and predictable environment for businesses and investors.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission said on Sunday that given their small number of US-traded stocks, the impact on telecommunications companies would be limited and they are well positioned to absorb any consequences of the deletion.
“The recent move by some US political forces to continually and unwarrantedly suppress foreign companies listed in US markets, even at the expense of undermining their own position in global capital markets, has shown that US rules and institutions are arbitrary. can be reckless and unpredictable, ”the CSRC said in a statement on its website.
US President Donald Trump signed an injunction in November to ban US investments in Chinese companies owned or controlled by the military in an effort to pressure Beijing over what it sees as abuses of business practices. The injunction prohibited American investors from buying and selling stock in a list of Chinese companies designated by the Pentagon as military ties.
China’s State Department later accused the US of “viciously maligning” its military-civilian integration policies and pledging to protect the country’s businesses. Chinese officials also have threatened to respond to previous actions by the Trump administration with their own blacklist of US companies.
– With the help of Max Zimmerman and Gregor Stuart Hunter
(Updates with CSRC statement in sixth-seventh paragraph)