Signs from China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom can be seen at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, China, November 5, 2018.
Aly Song | Reuters
The New York Stock Exchange is still scrapping three Chinese telecom giants.
The exchange will remove US-traded shares of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom from the Big Board, the NYSE said Wednesday.
Last week, the NYSE said it would scrape shares to comply with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The order was designed to prevent US companies and individuals from investing in companies that the government said would support the Chinese military.
It then reversed that decision on Monday, causing a lot of confusion. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the exchange he disagreed with the reversal, a senior administrative official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Tuesday.
The NYSE said the second reversal was due to new guidelines from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control that people in the US could not enter into certain transactions with the three companies as of Jan. 11. Trading in the three securities will be suspended at 4:00 PM ET on Jan. 11, the exchange said.
Shares of China Telecom fell 1.7% in early trading on Wednesday, while China Mobile fell about 1% and China Unicom gained about 0.8%.
Chinese officials criticized the NYSE’s original decision, with a spokesman for the China Securities Regulatory Commission saying on Monday that the executive order “completely ignored the factual situation of relevant companies and the legitimate rights of global investors, and seriously damaged market rule and order.” “
Trump issued the original order in November, as part of a series of measures taken against Chinese companies by his administration.
In August, the president started a legal battle for social media site TikTok with a similar contract targeting its parent company, China-based ByteDance and Tencent. Multiple US companies, including Oracle and Walmart, were in talks to take partial stakes in the video-sharing app.
Trump signed a bill in December that would force the deletion of Chinese stocks that did not meet US auditing standards, and the administration ordered the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board in May to avoid investing in Chinese companies.
—With reporting by Christine Wang