Shanghai Media plans to spin off units despite uncertainty

The mainland's second-largest television broadcaster is keen to tap into the capital markets and reinvent itself as a diversified nationwide conglomerate despite regulatory uncertainty over both endeavours, its chief executive said.

Shanghai Media Group president Li Ruigang said although it was unrealistic for the group to go public under current regulatory conditions, it planned to spin off some units engaged in programme production, advertising and other non-news businesses 'in one or two years'.

He did not disclose where the listings would take place.

The central government was weighing a scheme to liberalise the country's culture industry, a ranking official at the Central Publicity Department told state media last week.

Earlier, Beijing had declared its goal of consolidating the publishing industry, a sector as tightly controlled by the state as the television industry because of its being a political sensitive business, and vowed to facilitate the flotation of a few key publishers.

But the Communist Party has shown no signs of relaxing its grip on day-to-day news services.

'Right now, it's hard for Shanghai Media to go public as a group, because we are involved in a lot of news reporting,' Mr Li said. 'But we can 'marketise' some divisions, like fashion, animation production and entertainment. Then, in one or two years, it would be ripe for these divisions to go public, definitely.