Photographer: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images
The main Chinese oil companies may be next in the United States’ delisting list, after the New York Stock Exchange announced last week that it would remove the three largest telecommunications companies in the Asian country.
China’s largest offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd. may be at greater risk as it is in the The list of Pentagon companies it claims to be owned or controlled by Chinese military, according to Henik Fung, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. PetroChina Co. Ltd. and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp., also known as Sinopec, may also be under threat as the energy sector is crucial to China’s military, he said.
“More Chinese companies can be pulled out of the United States and the big oil companies can come as the next wave,” said Steven Leung, executive director of UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong. At the same time, the impact of the removal of the telecommunications companies is likely to be minimal, as they were barely traded in the United States and did not raise much money there, he said.
The NYSE said it would remove the list of telecom operators to comply with an executive order from the United States that imposes restrictions on companies identified as affiliated with the Chinese army. China Mobile Ltd., China Telecom Corp Ltd. and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd. will be suspended from trading between 7 and 11 January, and procedures to remove them from the list have been initiated, the exchange said.
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China’s Ministry of Commerce responded on Saturday, saying the country would take the necessary steps to protect the rights of Chinese companies and hopes that the two countries can work together to create a fair and predictable environment for businesses and investors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of China said on Sunday that, due to the small number of shares traded in the United States, the impact on telecommunications companies would be limited and that they are well positioned to deal with any consequences of going public.
“The recent move by some political forces in the United States to continually suppress foreign companies listed on the United States markets, even at the cost of undermining their own position in global capital markets, has shown that the rules and institutions of the United States they can become arbitrary, reckless and unpredictable, ”said the CSRC in a statement on its website.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order in November preventing American investments in Chinese military-owned or controlled companies in an attempt to put pressure on Beijing over what it considers abusive business practices. The order prohibited US investors from buying and selling shares in a list of Chinese companies designated by the Pentagon as having military ties.
Subsequently, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the United States of “cruelly slandering” its civil-military integration policies and promised to protect the country’s companies. Chinese authorities also threatened to respond to previous Trump administration actions with its own blacklist of American companies.
– With the help of Max Zimmerman and Gregor Stuart Hunter
(Updates to the CSRC statement in the sixth-seventh paragraphs)