CNOOC has become the first listed company to be penalised by the stock exchange for selective disclosures.
The stock exchange's listing committee yesterday publicly censured CNOOC, China's third-largest oil company, for an October 2002 teleconference with fund managers and media during which then chief financial officer Mark Qiu Zilei revealed that profits for the first three quarters of the year would be 'US$700 million'.
After the share price subsequently rose, CNOOC was forced to declare that the figure let slip by Mr Qiu was not definitive.
In another analysts' teleconference in July 2003, Mr Qiu indicated that strong oil prices would allow the company to pay a special dividend for the year. When this information was divulged in subsequent analysts' reports, the company's stock rose more than 10 per cent over two days and CNOOC had to declare that no final decision had been made.
'There is nothing more corrosive of market confidence than the feeling that some investors are excluded from an inner circle of privileged counter-parties,'' said Richard Williams, the head of listings at the exchange. 'The facts of this case demonstrate a further example of apparently selective briefing of analysts or, in some cases, the media.'
Mr Qiu left CNOOC early this year and is now a managing partner at China Renaissance Capital Investment, a joint venture with CSFB.
