New rules governing the transactions of State-owned assets and equities in non-listed domestic enterprises were jointly released yesterday by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) and the Ministry of Finance.

This was the first time standards and procedures have been clarified in this field to prevent irregularities and losses of State assets and to ensure open market practices, a commission spokesman said.

Only a small proportion of State-owned enterprises have been restructured into publicly listed companies. While assets in all other enterprises are traded in so-called assets and equities markets, many market rules have remained unclear until yesterday's release of the new regulation.

To take effect on February 1, the regulation will pave the way for the operation of these markets, which have been small in many places in China, so that they become more open, standard and grow more widespread.

Yet State holdings in listed companies and assets of financial institutions, which both trade in markets other than the assets and equities markets, are covered, or to be, by separate rules.

According to the regulation, all transactions of State-owned assets should take place within an assets equities market.

And all transactions should have their information properly released under the auspices of those types of markets.

The information of the seller and the assets to be sold, including relevant financial figures, should be published on designated media and the website of the markets.

Transactions can be made through public bidding, auctions, or, under certain circumstances, private negotiations. But deals involving insider trading and fraud may be declared invalid by the State-assets supervisory agencies.

Industry analysts also take the new regulation as a ground-breaking move in assets-related legislation in SOE reforms, now that number of SOE-based mergers and acquisitions has been on a rapid increase.

But some also have doubts. "Presently, a large number of property rights are still being transferred outside these markets,'' said Zhang Chunlin, a World Bank economist based in Beijing, noting the new rules are unlikely to put them all within the designated system all at once.

"It is crucial to have more parallel rules on property rights transactions, not just one set of them, and to make them clear and easy to follow in open competition,'' he said.

China has around 170 assets and equities markets, but only three large-scale ones, which are in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai respectively. And markets themselves are also experiencing mergers, to increase their efficiency and scope of business. In the long run, experts say, it is likely that only a few big ones will survive.

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