China’s securities regulator has unveiled plans to loosen restrictions on the key shareholders in domestic securities firms.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced on 13 June that it had recently made amendments to the “Securities Company Equity Management Regulations” (证券公司股权管理规定) and related implementation rules, and made them public for the solicitation of opinions.
According to CSRC the amendments change the definition of “key shareholders” in securities firm and “appropriately reduce” their qualification requirements.
These amendments include a change in the definition of “key shareholder” from “a shareholder holding over 25% of equity in a securities firm or the largest shareholder who holds over 5% of equity” to “a shareholder holding over 5% of equity in securities firms.”
The amendments also:
- Cancel the requirement that key shareholders possess ongoing profit-making capability;
- Reduce minimum net assets from 200 million yuan to 50 million yuan;
- No longer require that key shareholders possess matching financial operations experience;
- No longer require that key shareholders be “dragon’s heads” in the industry.
The amendments change the requirement that securities firm apply for approval with CSRC when “increasing registered capital and making major adjustments to equity structure, reducing registered capital, changing shareholders or real controllers holdings more than 5% of equity” to “when changing key shareholders or real controllers of companies.”
In March CSRC announced that starting from 1 April 2020 it would cancel the restriction on foreign ownership in Chinese securities firms.
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