Shanghai will encourage its city-owned financial companies to list to help raise funds to boost their capital.
Examples of Shanghai-based financial institutions preparing to list include Bank of Shanghai, Orient Securities, Guotai Jun'an Securities and Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank.
"There is greater demand for financial companies to seek more capital," said Fang Xinghai, director of the Shanghai Financial Services Office. "We should quickly push forward qualified financial institutions to go public."
The Bank of Shanghai, a city commercial lender, has already sent its listing application to regulators and is hoping to list this year. Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank, restructured from rural cooperatives in the city, is also actively preparing to list while the two brokerages are expected to be listed in 2012.
Companies which are not qualified yet to list should explore other capital-raising channels such as private placement, bonds issuing or attracting strategic investors from home and abroad. For instance, Dazhong Insurance has signed a deal for United States-based CV Starr & Co to be its strategic investor to boost the insurer's capital.
The securitization of local state-owned financial institutions is expected to rise to 80 percent at the end of 2012 from 63 percent last year in terms of net assets.
Heads of 11 locally-owned financial firms have signed contracts with the financial authority to meet the three-year target for them to be efficiently run.
As Shanghai seeks sustainable growth, five industry funds have been created or are being set up to boost the growth of the financial, shipping, cultural, energy and services industries.
