China aims to maintain sound development of the national economy through mergers and acquisitions. The State Council has announced it will require companies in the automobile, iron and steel, cement, machinery manufacturing, electrolytic aluminum and rare earth industries to accelerate their M&A plans.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will require local governments to report at least one M&A by the end of October this year, which means that during the month there will be at least 30 M&As in China. In 2008 there were more than 13 million companies in China.
Feng Wei, an analyst with Huatai United Securities, was quoted by the Beijing Review as saying that with assistance from the dozen government departments, the M&A process would be accelerated within the year.