Privatization through an overseas listing: Evidence from China's H-share firms

We study the partial privatization of 53 Chinese state-owned enterprises (by their listings on the Hong Kong Exchange over the period July 1993 to December 2002. We find that listing has led to a median increase of 70% in real net profits, 80% in real sales, 50% in capital spending, and a mild but nonsignificant improvement in coverage ratios, but no improvement in return on sales and a significant underperformance of returns against several market index benchmarks. Further investigation shows that firm performance is negatively related to state ownership, but positively related to legal-personal ownership and foreign ownership.