China cracks down on market manipulators

● China slapped a company with fines totaling 5.5 billion yuan (about R10.3-billion) for manipulating the stock market, the biggestever punishment for such an infringement.

Xiamen Beibadao Group was charged with manipulating the share prices of three Shenzhen-listed companies, Jiangsu Zhangjiagang Rural Commercial Bank, Jiangsu Jiangyin Rural Commercial Bank and Guangdong Hoshion Aluminium, China’s securities regulator said on Wednesday.

The penalty is almost six times what Xiamen Beibadao earned by manipulating the shares in the space of two months, the watchdog said.

China has been mounting a campaign to stamp out illicit behaviour in its equity market, which, despite being the second-largest in the world, is dominated by individual, often first-time investors.

The drive has been stepped up over the past year, with Liu Shiyu, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, saying in February last year he would pursue market malpractice and wrongdoing no matter whether it’s “historical or current”.

The severity of Xiamen Beibadao’s punishment isn’t unusual.

In December, an equities trader in the city of Foshan, in Guangdong province, was fined 54-million yuan for manipulating 15 stocks and making a profit of 27-million yuan. A week later, another trader in nearby Shenzhen copped a 1-million yuan fine for a stock-price manipulation plan that actually lost him money.

Those incidents followed a string of others earlier last year, with an investor ordered to pay 1.17-billion yuan in two cases of manipulation, and a 3.47-billion-yuan fine levied on a company controller, who was also banned from the securities industry.

In April, a former stock market official was fined 251-million yuan for illegal trading activities.