Reuters
HONG KONG — ZTE Corp. may be in the crossfire of U.S.-China trade negotiations, with its future hanging in the balance. Its shareholders, though, can’t do anything about it.
The Chinese telecom giant halted its shares on April 17 after the U.S. said it was banning American companies from selling components to ZTE for seven years. In its latest update on Wednesday, ZTE said in a filing that its shares “will remain suspended” without giving a time frame.
Share suspensions have long been a quirk of Chinese markets, allowing companies to apply to exchanges to stop trading in their stock for weeks or even months at a time. ZTE’s suspended stock has left its current shareholders in limbo and prospective investors unable to trade the shares. Holders of the company’s Hong Kong-listed shares — which are also suspended — include prominent western institutional investors such as BlackRock and Baillie Gifford, according to regulatory filings.
“It’s enormously frustrating,” James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University, said of long-term share suspensions. “If you’re an investor, you’re trapped and you don’t know what your positions are really worth.”
Also popular on WSJ.com: