China’s securities regulator will review the initial public offering application from Everbright Securities Co Ltd next week, marking the restart of reviews for securities firm IPOs, the official Shanghai Securities News reported Friday.

Everbright Securities said in its statement that it plans to issue up to 520 million shares, which will account for 15.21 percent of total shares.

In 2003, Citic Securities Co. Ltd went public, making it the first securities firm to ever list on the domestic stock market through an IPO. Shortly after that, the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) started a reform on domestic securities firms and stopped reviewing similar IPO plans.

When the three-year reform finally ended last year, the CSRC expressed its support for qualified securities companies going public through IPOs and made it one of the China securities regulator’s key projects.

Since then, many securities companies have been competing to win the first IPO approval after the five-year suspension. Everbright has succeeded in being the first IPO applicant and is waiting for final approval.

For more details, please read the full story in Chinese

(http://paper.cnstock.com/paper_new/html/2008-06/27/content_62022073.htm)

(China.org.cn by Yan Pei, June 27, 2008)