Shenzhen boards to be merged with the SME

China’s securities regulator has approved the merger of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s main board with the SME board.

The merger will follow the general principles of unifying business rules and operation supervision modes, with issuance and listing conditions, investor thresholds, trading mechanisms, and stock codes and abbreviations remaining unchanged, Pi Liuyi, an official with the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said on Friday.

Involving only adjustments on parts of business rules, market products, and issuance and listing arrangements, the merger will have little impact on market operations and investors’ trading in general, a spokesperson with the bourse noted.

After the merger, relevant indexes involving the SME board need to be adjusted adaptively. Fixed-income products, futures, and options products would be mostly unaffected. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connect program would also not be affected, it added.

These index adjustments will not contain substantial changes to index compiling methods. It would, hence, not lead to investment target adjustments of fund products tracking relevant indexes, the spokesperson said.

By the end of January, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s main board and the SME board housed 1,468 listed firms, accounting for 35 percent of the A-share market.