(Yicai) Feb. 19 -- China’s securities regulator has terminated 45 applications for initial public offerings on the Chinese mainland market this year, as it enhanced supervision of the IPO process.

Forty-five applications for IPOs on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and Beijing Stock Exchange were terminated so far this year as of yesterday, Yicai learned. Among them, 43 were voluntary withdrawals, one was a regulatory review failure, and one was a delay in the handling of supplementary materials.

Seventeen of the applications were for the SSE, of which 10 for the main board and seven for the Star Market, 12 were for the SZE, of which one for the main board and one for the ChiNext, and the remaining 16 were for the BSE.

Supervision of IPOs on the Chinese mainland has been recently tightened. Moreover, the China Securities Regulatory Commission has started publicly releasing punishments for companies violating IPO application requirements.

For example, the CSRC announced on Feb. 9, the last working day before the eight-day Chinese New Year holiday, that it fined S2C CNY4 million (USD555,900) for fraudulent issues related to the Shanghai-based semiconductor firm IPO application withdrawal in 2022. S2C’s executives, including the chairperson, chief executive officer, and general manager, were also fined between CNY1 million and CNY3 million each.

The CSRC investigation found that S2C fabricated financial information in the documents it submitted for the IPO. For example, the firm inflated its 2020 operating revenue and profit by CNY15.4 million and CNY12.5 million (USD2.1 million and USD1.7 million), respectively.

The applicants and related parties will be responsible for any violation found in the IPO review process, the CSRC noted, adding that for issuers and intermediaries suspected of major law-breaking acts, regulators will make thorough investigations even if they withdraw the IPO applications.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione