A major Chinese mining company offered a rare public apology for its role in polluting a local river, while fishing vessels helped clean up a large oil slick off the major port city of Dalian, as China continues to grapple with a spate of industrial accidents.

In a series of statements this week, China’s Zijin Mining Group Co. backtracked from earlier explanations that weather caused wastewater from its copper processing plant in China’s southeastern Fujian province to leak into the Ting River and kill fish. Company failures were to blame as well, Zijin Chairman Chen Jinghe said in a 10-minute appearance late Monday on Fujian province television.

Zijin’s board of directors followed up with an apology that expressed regret for the accident, blamed the company’s “weak” management, and pledged unspecified compensation and remediation.

“The Company was overconfident, had a lack of crisis awareness and didn’t properly handle the balance between economic efficiency, ecological benefit and public interest,” the board letter said.

China Securities Regulatory Commission will be investigating Zijin’s delayed disclosure of the leak. From Caixin:

China’s securities regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), opened an investigation on July 19 into Zijin Mining’s notification to the public of the wastewater leak, according to an announcement from Zijin Mining the same day. The total economic losses related to the leakage incidents from the Zijinshan Copper Mine smelting plant will be released after the investigation.

Wastewater from a Zijinshan Copper Mine smelting plant leaked copper acid into the nearby Ting River in Shanghang county of Fujian Province on July 3, resulting in the poisoning of 1,890 tons of fish and massive economic losses for local fishermen. On July 16, another huge leak occurred at the same Zijinshan Copper Mine smelting plant. Five hundred cubic meters of wastewater leaked into the Ting River.

[...] Zijin Mining delayed public disclosure of the incident until July 13, which brought widespread criticism. The company announced that about 9,100 cubic meters of wastewater containing copper acid flowed into the Ting River. On July 12, Zijin Mining suspended the trading of its A-shares and H-shares on July 12.

(Images via Caixin, from CFP)

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Post tags: CSRC, industrial pollution, water pollution
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China’s securities regulator has indicated it would lift the unofficial ban on initial public offers that came into effect after the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September. It also promised to push through major reforms in the market. It specifically promised to reduce the extent of control it exercises on the market.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission has come out with a consultation paper seeking the views of the industry on a set of measures that include a move to “diminish administrative guidance” in setting IPO prices, it said.

The regulator has been criticized for allowing companies to set share prices at artificially low levels so that they surge up dramatically on the day of listing and bring about an overall feel good atmosphere in the market. This allowed for little role of market forces and the regulator actually played a role in moving prices, the critics say. Retail investors are at a disadvantage while the big players make the most of the existing system, critics say.

© dwang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CSRC, economic reform, IPO
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Citic Securities Co. and three other brokerages may be allowed to offer loans for stock purchases as China’s government seeks to bolster the market after the benchmark index slumped 66 percent this year.

Haitong Securities Co., Guotai Junan Securities Co. and Everbright Securities Co. may also start margin trading as early as mid-November under a pilot program by the securities regulator, an official with knowledge of the matter said, declining to be identified because the information isn’t public.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission aims to lure investors and expand the nation’s capital market as slumping stock values erode trading. Brokerages may earn 6.6 billion yuan ($966 million) of interest income from margin trading and short selling next year, the Shanghai Securities Journal reported Oct. 6, citing an estimate from Haitong.

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Post tags: CSRC, securities, stock market
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China’s securities regulator said Sunday it would shortly begin a trial program allowing securities firms to engage in margin lending and short selling, long considered necessary to help the country’s stock market mature beyond its repeated boom-bust cycles.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission said in a statement on its Web site that the program would be started, but it didn’t give a timeline. It said the brokerages allowed to participate in the program would be decided based on their net capital size and risk capabilities, among other criteria. The trial would be expanded at some point, it said.

A broker talks on the phone at a brokerage firm in Hong Kong.
Margin trading allows investors to borrow money to buy shares. Short selling allows investors to sell borrowed stocks, typically in a bet that prices will fall.

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Post tags: CSRC, securities, stock market
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China’s securities regulator has banned one fund manager from the country’s capital markets for life and another for seven years in a warning to the industry to clean up lax internal controls.

The two managers were banned after buying shares in companies their funds invested in and then selling them for a profit – a practice known as “building a rathole” in Chinese.

Tang Jian, a former manager for China International Fund Management, a joint venture between JPMorgan and Shanghai International Trust Co, was banned for life after storing up Rmb1.53m ($220,000) in his rathole, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Wang Limin, formerly a manager at China Southern Fund Management, was banned for seven years after similarly making a profit of Rmb1.5m.

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CSRC, scandals, securities regulation
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