675 firms still waiting to list on China's stock exchanges

Around 675 companies are still queued up to list around US$63 billion worth of shares on mainland stock exchanges, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing securities filings. A review of prospectuses filed by the companies showed that most of the money they were hoping to raise would have gone into job creation, retail expansion and other corporate investments across china. Analysts say a slow pace of reforms means the backlog of initial public offerings – roughly equivalent in dollar terms to all the new corporate loans made in 2014 by the country’s largest financial institution by assets, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China – is unlikely to go anywhere soon.