However, the high-profile Tsingtao label is probably worth more than the company's vats, kettles and bottling plants.

This has caused problems for Mr Paul Brown, managing director of Sallmanns (Far East), whose company is handling the valuation of Qingdao Brewery, one of the nine mainland companies that plan foreign listings.

Mr Brown predicted that the first of the nine enterprises should be ready for listing by the end of this month, while the others should follow shortly, before the valuations and accounts became outdated.

Mr Brown was a speaker at an Asian Law and Practice seminar yesterday, which heard about the hurdles advisers faced in trying to prepare the nine companies for their debut.

As well as valuation practices, differences in organisation and accounting practice conspired to cause problems for anyone working to prepare a Chinese state enterprise for listing overseas.

Under normal valuation practice, property is valued depending on its ''open market value'' with a calculated depreciation. The problem was applying this principle where there was no open market, said Mr Brown.

The situation was further complicated by Chinese bureaucracy, which had created a guide book to valuations. This laid down exact valuations and formulas for various assets, which the state-appointed internal valuer followed to the letter.

But when the internal valuer's report and the independent valuer's report did not tally, the authorities wanted an explanation.

According to Carmelo Lee, partner in Woo Kwan Lee and Lo, problems relating to a company's re-organisation ranged from proving the right to occupy land to novation of material contracts from the holding company to the listing company.