Shanghai: Lucas Lu

Lucas Lu: The biggest issue is how to make them function like real markets, how to make trading more active on these markets, to get the funding to the small businesses. Lucas Lu, ChinaScope, according to Business Week. So far, the fledgling stock exchanges, which have less stringent listing standards than national exchanges, havent helped many companies. Fewer than one-third of the 150 stocks listed on two large screens at Shanghais OTC market have ever traded, according to ChinaScope Financial, a Shanghai-based data provider, and only 10 percent of stocks on the Zhejiang exchange traded in 2013. From Shanghai to Chongqing and Qilu to Tianjin, there isnt much activity on regional equity markets, says Lucas Lu, a vice president at ChinaScope. The biggest issue is how to make them function like real markets, how to make trading more active on these markets, to get the funding to the small businesses and On a weekday morning in early April, Shanghais over-the-counter stock market is almost deserted. Two cleaning ladies sweep the floor of a trading hall devoid of brokers or computers, while a woman at an information desk eats breakfast and talks on her mobile phone. The scene isnt much different at three other OTC exchanges in Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shandong province visited over the past five months. Since 2012 at least 18 regional OTC stock exchanges have been launched some backed by private investors, others by city and provincial governments as part of a push to help small businesses raise capital. Without access to public markets, small businesses often borrow at high rates from unregulated lenders in the countrys shadow banking system. A regional equity exchange was set up in Zhejiang province south of Shanghai in 2012, the year scores of businessmen, unable to make payments on underground loans, disappeared or committed suicide. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.