The New York Stock Exchange said it no longer plans to delist three Chinese telecommunications giants and overturned a decision announced four days earlier.
The NYSE said late Monday it dropped the plans after “further consultations with relevant regulators related to the Bureau of Foreign Wealth Control”.
Hong Kong-listed stocks of China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom rebounded on news of the reversal.
On Thursday, the NYSE announced that it would delist American custody shares of the companies under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The November regulation was designed to prevent American companies and individuals from investing in companies that the Trump administration claimed to have helped the Chinese military.
Big stock index giants like MSCI, S&P Dow Jones Indices and FTSE Russell, as well as popular trading app Robinhood, have also taken steps to fulfill the executive order.
The Chinese Securities Commission said Monday that the executive order was based on “political purposes” and “completely ignored the real situations of relevant companies and the legitimate rights of global investors, and severely damaged market rules and regulations”.
Trump’s investment ban will go into effect next Monday, just over a week before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Biden is unlikely to make any immediate changes to US-China relations, but has repeatedly stated that he would prefer to work with US allies to enforce “traffic rules” for world trade.
Still, this approach would be at odds with that of the Trump administration, which often took aggressive, unilateral measures to challenge China on economic and national security issues.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.
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