At the end of 2002, in a move that seemed to give a Christmas present to foreign investors, the Chinese government came out with legislation opening up all classes of listed and non-listed Chinese shares to foreign mergers and acquisition.
Allowing the previously jealously guarded State-owned shares of listed companies to be made available to foreign investors was groundbreaking, says Stella Leung, a partner at law firm O'Melveny and Myers.
The document that came out in November 2002 promised that the non-tradable legal person and state shares the former owned by state entities, such as other SOEs, and the latter by the government ministries would be made available to foreign...
