China Metallurgical Construction Corporation (MCC), a state-owned behemoth, is revving up efforts to spin off some of its well-performing businesses and list them on domestic bourses, a senior company official said.

"We are deepening the shareholding reform of our corporation and will partly list our assets," Ma Yanli, MCC's general manager told China Daily at the first China-ASEAN Exposition in Nanning, capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

According to Ma, MCC has selected Chongqing-based CISDI Engineering Co Ltd as its first subsidiary to pursue a listing on yuan-dominated A-share markets.

CISDI, once a MCC wholly-owned company, completed shareholding restructure after other investors such as Panzhihua Steel, Shanghai Baosight Software Inc and Yantai Industrial Furnace Factory purchased its stakes.

The company specializes in designing and constructing facilities for steel plants, power-generators and other factories. It also provides relevant services such as consultation and supervision. The company has registered assets of 1 billion yuan (US$121 million).

However, Ma did not reveal more details about the listing process, only saying they will speed up the pace.

And he said he is not sure about the go-public timetable as the traffic jam towards the main board shows no signs of abating.

Apart from CISDI, MCC also restructured some other assets by selling stakes to domestic co-operators.

"We have invited some of our co-operators to buy our stakes," said Ma. "This is aimed to intensify modern corporate governance by reforming us into shareholding entities."

Ma also told China Daily his corporation has considered courting foreign investors in future since right now the time might not be ripe to do so.

MCC is China's leading state-owned construction firm under the supervision of the government. It has assets of 36 billion yuan (US$4.35 billion). The company is the major constructor of infrastructure for the nation's big steel makers including Baosteel, Anshan Steel and Wuhan Steel.

Commenting on its overseas expansion, Ma said MCC is one of the pioneers of the Chinese Government's call to "go global," and has won bids on a number of projects in more than 10 Asian countries.

(China Daily November 6, 2004)