Some cry, some laugh all the way to the bank Blame it on restructuring. The revamp among the mainland's telecommunications giants announced on Monday effectively wiped HK$316.5 billion off their market value in just 10 days. The day after China Unicom announced a pricey sale of its mobile network to China Telecom and a share swap to take over China Netcom, investors voted with their feet and deducted from the stocks a total market value of HK$120 billion. As these three counters all fell by double digits to below the pre-announcement level on May 22, China Mobile dipped 2.21 per cent, mainly because it had already tumbled more than 10 per cent last week before an unfavourable regulatory approach against its monopolistic standing in mobile telephony. While telecommunications players hardly gained - at least in terms of market value - from this restructuring, their investment banking advisers will be raking in millions to help the listed entities navigate the intricacies of the sales and purchases. China International Capital Corp, assisted by JP Morgan, has won the mandate as lead adviser to China Unicom. Citigroup will help China Netcom delist, three years after it sponsored the company's initial public offering. UBS will advise China Telecom, while Rothschild will make sure that China Netcom's minority shareholders are not short-changed. But some big names are missing obviously from the list. Goldman Sachs, which sponsored the listing of China Mobile and China Netcom, did not get a mandate this time. Neither did Morgan Stanley, which brought China Unicom and China Telecom to the capital market. We were told that these deals were predetermined by Beijing, so the advisory role is no more than executing orders and matching numbers. Still the sheer deal size should help some investment banks not just to weather the sluggish equity markets, but climb the rungs in this year's bankers' league table as well. Stay tuned for more. Analysts' favourite takes bow Talking about telecommunications restructuring, we note that Cable & Wireless HKT has hired Hutchison Telecommunications International chief financial officer Tim Pennington as the financial director of its international arm, focusing on separating its Asian and United States businesses. The new role should be easy enough for Mr Pennington who, in the past seven years, has been orchestrating a few exercises in corporate re-engineering, spin-off, privatisation, and was involved also in the world's biggest telecommunications transaction last year, namely the HK$86.5 billion sale of India's Hutchison Essar to Vodafone Group. Although not exactly the CFO featured in financial magazines, Mr Pennington will be dearly missed by sell-side analysts, many of whom have been spoiled by his open and transparent approach, which is quite rare among executives in the Hutchison group. Homegrown star When it comes to picking mainland stocks, which Chinese brokerage trumps its American and European rivals? For the second year in a row, Guotai Junan Securities was ranked No1 in StarMine's Best Analysts list last year, having the best record on buy/sell recommendations and the most accurate earnings estimates of constituent stocks in the H-share index. Guotai Junan, which is known for making the best calls in the energy and chemical sectors, beat Credit Suisse and Citigroup in the survey. Bank of China International Research, on the other hand, was kicked off the top 10 list last year after ranking second the year before. Foxconn set to tango If there is an adverse relationship between a company's share price and media exposure of its executives in gossip columns, then Foxconn International Holdings just could be reversing its bad fortune this year. Terry Guo Tai-ming, 58, founder of Hon Hai Group and ultimate owner of Foxconn, reportedly is getting married again next month, this time, to his 34-year-old dance instructor. The richest tycoon in Taiwan made it to gossip pages when he dated top Taiwanese model Lin Chi-ling and Hong Kong movie star Carina Lau Ka-ling. Now he may be off the hook of the paparazzi. So get ready for the rise in Foxconn's share price, which has been among the worst blue chips, having shed 40 per cent year to date.