source from:WSJ
MARKETS
Chinese Regulator Plans to Prune Waiting List for IPOs
China’s securities regulator is aiming to trim the pipeline for floats by possibly one third

By SHEN HONG
July 5, 2016 4:57 a.m. ET
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SHANGHAI—China’s securities regulator is looking to cull the nearly 900-strong backlog of companies seeking to list on domestic stock exchanges, people familiar with the situation said Tuesday, with one suggestion being to reduce the list by around a third.


The people, who have been briefed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said the regulator wants to cut the pipeline of companies applying to float, although it hasn’t given individual firms a specific target for how many clients they should cull from their list applicants.


Leading brokerages are already carrying out their own reviews of which companies they should continue to support through the IPO process, the people said. One person said his firm had been given guidelines by the regulator to assess whether companies it was advising were eligible to list.


“The current size of the backlog is too heavy for the market to absorb, so the CSRC is basically asking many of the IPO candidates to drop out or be kicked out so as to ease the pressure,” another person said. “There are internal discussions within the CSRC that point to a desire to slash the length of the IPO queue by as much as one third,” the person added.


The CSRC has in recent weeks pledged to clamp down on fraudulent IPO applicants. It issued a directive that bans firms that have violated environmental protection laws within the past three years from floating new shares.


According to data from the CSRC, there were a total of 894 companies applying for an IPO approval as of June 30. Under current rules, the regulator must approve all IPOs before companies are allowed to list.


Analysts say the size of the backlog of IPO applicants has weighed on the market, with investors concerned a potential surge in the supply of stocks to trade if approvals speed up.


A CSRC spokesman declined to comment on the matter.