By Pete Sweeney SHANGHAI | Thu May 24, 2012 11:06am EDT SHANGHAI May 24 (Reuters) - China Auto Rental has formally withdrawn its application to hold an initial public offering in the United States, marking an end to the first attempt by a Chinese firm to list in New York since U.S. regulators tightened rules for foreign applicants. The company, which postponed a planned NASDAQ listing on April 24 citing "poor market conditions," disclosed its decision in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).It originally hoped to raise around $158.1 million to pay off debt and expand its fleet, before reducing the targeted sum to $138 million.Yao Junhong, executive vice president of China Auto Rental, was quoted in Chinese business magazine Caixin ... Continue reading →

SINGAPORE/JAKARTA | Thu May 24, 2012 2:15am EDT SINGAPORE/JAKARTA May 24 (Reuters) - Indonesia's central bank is expected to limit the maximum stake a single shareholder can take in the country's banks to below 50 percent, a move that could sc u pper Singapore-based DBS Group's $7.3 billion bid for Bank Danamon. According to sources with direct knowledge of the plan, Bank Indonesia is expected to move the single-shareholder threshold from the current 99 percent to a level below 50 percent.That would ruin DBS's plan to buy the 67.4 percent stake held by Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings in Indonesia's Danamon, if it can't negotiate an exemption.The central bank is also expected to set out differing ownership rules depending on whether the shareholder is another ... Continue reading →

Tue May 22, 2012 4:54pm EDT * Ontario Securities Commission also names ex-officials * OSC alleges "deceitful and dishonest action by Sino"* Formal allegations come a year after short-seller report* OSC says also examining "role of the gatekeepers"By Euan Rocha and Jennifer KwanTORONTO, May 22 (Reuters) - The Ontario Securities Commission charged Sino-Forest Corp and some of the Chinese forestry company's former executives with fraud on Tuesday, nearly a year after the allegations surfaced and its stock imploded.The OSC, Canada's most powerful securities regulator, said Sino-Forest and former members of its overseas management engaged in numerous "deceitful and dishonest" actions connected with its purported purchase and sale of timber in China.It also said some former company executives attempted to mislead its investigation into Sino-Forest, whose ... Continue reading →

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BEIJING | Tue May 22, 2012 2:18am EDT BEIJING May 22 (Reuters) - China's top economic planner may approve twice as many enterprise bond issues this year than in 2011, in an effort to develop the country's fledgling debt markets and wean state firms off of their excessive reliance on bank lending. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) may approve 500 billion yuan ($79 billion) in new enterprise bonds this year, giving special support to the Ministry of Railways, which is treated as a Chinese company for the purpose of bond issuance, an NDRC official told a brokerage industry seminar.Last year, the NDRC approved a combined 249 billion yuan of enterprise bonds under its responsibility, official data shows.The NDRC also will give priority in ... Continue reading →

If you’ve been following the investor class action against Shandong-based Gulf Resources, one of those China reverse-merger companies gone wrong, you probably are not surprised that the plaintiffs survived a motion to dismiss yesterday: A federal judge advanced claims that a Chinese chemical company violating securities laws and duped investors with fake accounting figures. Yeah, that’s right. Another Chinese company listed in the U.S. accused of accounting book flim-flammery. Funny thing: I haven’t really been following this case, but once I read about the status of the litigation, I had a quick peek at Gulf Resources to see who they are. Perusing their latest annual report, I was interested to read about who they used to be. If you’re not used to reverse mergers, this ... Continue reading →

Hong Kong to ban mobile phone orders on trading floor May 22 2012 Trond Vagen in Hong Kong Hong Kong's securities regulator will ban the taking of client orders via a mobile telephone when in the workplace, to clamp down on market misconduct in the territory. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said that the new rules would take effect on December 1, 2012. It also said firms would have to keep telephone records for client orders for six months instead of the previous three months, and to report suspected market misconduct offences by clients to the regulator. The SFC had originally sought to ban outright the use of mobile telephones to accept client orders. But it said a majority of respondents to a consultation ... Continue reading →

By Tommy Wilkes and Laurence Fletcher LONDON | Mon May 21, 2012 2:24am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - It's the day after Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday party and David Harding, the head of one of the most successful hedge funds in the world, is bubbling with talk of black holes. Given the financial crisis of the last few years, some might see that as an unwise topic of conversation for a hedge fund manager. But for Harding, a physicist, the geekier the better.The 50-year-old runs Winton Capital, one of a secretive but influential band of computer-driven hedge funds that bet tens of billions of dollars on the world's financial markets using algorithms - mathematical instructions to computers - which consume everything from bond price ... Continue reading →

Sun May 20, 2012 10:31pm EDT (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said it is to sell up to half of its stake in Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma's Alibaba Group back to the Chinese company for $7.1 billion, and hand most of the sale proceeds to its shareholders. The deal caps years of discussions between the two companies over Alibaba reclaiming some or all of the 40 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce firm that Yahoo bought for about $1 billion in 2005.Under the agreement, Yahoo will sell half of that stake in Alibaba for at least $6.3 billion in cash and up to $800 million in new Alibaba preferred stock.Yahoo's Alibaba stake and its 35 percent holding in Yahoo Japan, which it jointly owns with Softbank ... Continue reading →