Student athletes engaging in finance, in their freshman year driving a Porsche and wearing a Rolex to intern at CITIC Securities, were able to participate in three IPO projects right after starting their internship, but these are not the most ironic parts.
To put it bluntly, these are all trivial matters.
The real irony is that CITIC Securities actually ranked first in the securities company quality evaluation published by the North Exchange.
You see, over the past five years, CITIC Securities has consistently been a disaster area for companies they sponsor for listing, with financial fraud and abnormal business declines. Seventy percent of the companies they sponsor have experienced abnormal business declines, and at least ten have had financial fraud issues.
For example, the first A-share company to be delisted due to major violations this year, Boton Environment, was sponsored for listing by CITIC Securities. It was found by the Securities Regulatory Commission to have engaged in serious financial fraud from 2017 to 2021 for five consecutive years.
Furthermore, the first stock listed through fraudulent registration, Zijin Storage, was also sponsored for listing by CITIC Securities. The company inflated its operating income by over 430 million yuan and profits by 210 million yuan through fictitious sales contracts, fund arrangements, and premature revenue recognition in its prospectus, suspected of the crime of fraudulent issuance of securities, causing losses to nearly 17,000 investors. The company was delisted in October last year.
In May this year, Zhengzhou Hengda Zhikong had its listing revoked due to irregularities in the financial materials provided during the listing process. Once again, this was sponsored for listing by CITIC Securities.
These are not isolated cases. Out of the 141 companies sponsored for listing by CITIC Securities from 2019 to 2022, 65 companies saw a significant decline in performance in the year following their listing, 83 companies saw their stock prices fall below the issue price, with nearly half experiencing a break in the issue price, and 12 companies saw their stock prices halved from the issue price.
In 2022, the China Securities Association downgraded CITIC Securities' investment banking business quality evaluation from A to B, making it the only brokerage firm among the top "Three Central and One Hua" brokerage camp to be downgraded to B.
For a company like this to still be able to rank first in practice quality, one can only imagine the business quality of other companies. The extent of financial fraud and fraudulent listings that have yet to come to light is perhaps only known to the heavens. The ecological environment of the Chinese securities market has deteriorated to an unprecedented level.
Compared to these deep-seated structural issues, a little favoritism in wining and dining is trivial.