China’s securities regulator has raised the bar for companies seeking an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s science and technology innovation board, as it seeks to improve the quality of listed companies amid a stock market rout that’s sent the benchmark SSE STAR 50 Index tumbling more than a quarter over the past year, reports Caixin. The China Securities Regulatory Commission’s (CSRC) guidelines for evaluating companies’ qualifications to list on the STAR Market was updated on Tuesday to incorporate greater emphasis on investment in research and development and commercialization of their technologies.
The update is aimed at implementing the State Council’s new guidelines on supporting the high-quality development of the capital markets, as well as the CSRC’s new rules that tighten listing controls to improve the quality of listed companies, the regulator said in a statement accompanying the update.
The STAR Market guidelines were first released in March 2020, and have been updated every year.