Others News
- Nation casts net abroad to fill jobs at State firms
Date: 22-May-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
CHINA is launching a global search for top managers for some of its State firms as part of a drive to bring in more international expertise.
The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) said yesterday it is looking for 9 vice presidents, 7 chief accountants and 6 legal consultants for 22 big State-owned enterprises.
These firms include industry heavyweights China Netcom Group, China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co. Ltd., China Railway Materials Commercial Corp., China Huadian Corp. and China First Automobile Works Group.
China started a global recruitment drive for its State firms in 2003 and has so far hired 81 senior executives, SASAC said in an e-mailed statement.
Hong Kong-raised Eddie Wang took over last year as president of Minsheng Banking Corp., China's eighth-largest lender.
Frank Newman, who helped turn around Bank of America in the 1980s, has headed Shenzhen Development Bank since May 2005.
SASAC oversees 160 centrally administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs), which control vast swathes of the economy, and has plans to cut the number to between 80 and 100 by 2010.
As part of this restructuring, SASAC is willing to sell minority stakes to strategic investors, a senior official said in remarks published yesterday.
'In the next step of reform, we need only to keep controlling stakes in 80 to 100 group firms - that is at least 51 percent. Strategic investors are welcome to take the other 49 percent,'Zhou Fangsheng, vice head of Enterprise Reform Bureau of SASAC, told the official China Securities Journal.
Zhou said his office was encouraging SOEs to diversify their shareholding structure to improve efficiency and internal controls.
He said not all SOEs needed to list their entire operations on the stock market.
They could also introduce private equity funds, which could eventually sell their stakes through three property rights transaction centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin.
China would also welcome the participation of asset management firms, venture capital funds as well as industrial investment funds to better manage State assets, Zhou said.
Last month, a SASAC official said China is planning to set up a 10 billion yuan (US$1.30 billion) fund to help the restructuring of its SOEs.
The fund was likely to expand to 70 billion yuan and the government is in talks to bring in foreign investors, including Singapore investment agency Temasek, Li Baomin, deputy director of the Research Bureau of SASAC, told a forum in April.
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