Some of China's largest state-owned firms will delist from the US market amid ongoing auditing battle between the 2 countries

Carla Mozée
Updated ·2 min read
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Staff refuel cars at a PetroChina gas station.
A PetroChina gas station in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province of China.Zhang Yun/China News Service via Getty Images

  • Five Chinese companies including energy giants Sinopec and PetroChina said Friday they each plan to delist their shares from the US market.

  • The moves come as the US and China remain locked in a dispute over the inspection of work by Chinese auditing firms.

  • China's securities regulator reportedly said the delisting plans were based on the companies' concerns.

Energy heavyweights PetroChina and Sinopec were among the Chinese companies on Friday that filed their intentions to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, as China and the US remain deadlocked in a long-running auditing dispute.

PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, Aluminum Corp. of China, China Life Insurance, and  Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical each filed regulatory notifications about plans for their shares to cease trading in the US market. The companies said they would submit delisting applications later this month.

US-listed shares of Sinopec were down more than 6% and PetroChina fell nearly 4%.

The "considerable administrative burden for performing the disclosure obligations as necessary for maintaining the listing of the ADSs on the NYSE as a result of the differences in the regulatory rules of multiple listing venues," were among the reasons PetroChina in a statement said its board approved the delisting of its American Depositary Shares.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission said the delisting plans were based on the business concerns held by the companies, according to Bloomberg.

Chinese and the US authorities had reportedly been working on resolving an auditing dispute that has been running for more than a decade. Chinese officials have been reluctant to allow inspections by overseas regulators of local accounting firms because of national security concerns. US lawmakers have set a 2024 deadline for Chinese companies to comply with US auditing rules or face delisting.

Roughly 300 businesses based in China and Hong Kong were at risk of being pulled off US exchanges, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence estimate in May. The market value of those businesses was more than $2.4 trillion.

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