| |
 |
B-share buyers close to 1m
|
Yang Yunfei
B-SHARE account holders have swelled to near a record high of one million following China's decision to open up its previously foreigner-only B-share market to domestic investors, statistics released by the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges show.
By the end of March, the total number of B-share account holders on the two exchanges had reached 989,959, an increase of 715,700 over the figure at the end of 2000, or a single-quarter increase of nearly 261 per cent, the two exchanges announced last week.
China announced on February 19 that domestic investors with legal foreign currency deposits would be allowed to trade B shares, freeing up to US$75 billion in personal foreign exchange deposits available for stock investment.
The decision unleashed a wave of interest in the cheaply valued, 114-counter market and hundreds of thousands of local punters flocked to domestic securities houses to open trading accounts.
At one point, some 341,000 new B-share new accounts were added in just two days, compared to 280,000 over the nine years before that.
Statistics show that during the first quarter of this year, the number of B-share account holders on the Shanghai stock exchange surged 313.64 per cent to 600,600, or 455,500 more than the total at the end of last year. The figure on the Shenzhen stock exchange reached 389,400, up 260,300 over the end of 2000, a 201.78 per cent increase.
Retail investors account for 98.55 per cent of the total B-share accounts, while the percentage of institutional B-share investors has slipped 1.45 per cent, statistics indicate.
|
|
|
|
