The three Chinese telecommunications companies that were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have asked the exchange to once again reconsider its decision.
China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Mobile said Thursday that the NYSE should conduct another review and reverse its decision of removing their American depositary shares.
The NYSE had already reversed its decision twice. The first time was after it consulted regulators and the second one was after the exchange was approached by a White House official.
The three Chinese companies said that they had filed an appeal on Wednesday. The NYSE is scheduled to conduct another review within 25 days from their filing, the companies said. In the meantime, the suspension of trading for the companies' shares in the U.S. will stay in place until an outcome is finalized.
The NYSE initially decided to delist the companies to comply with an executive order issued by former U.S. president Donald Trump. The order effectively barred Americans from trading stocks owned by companies that the government accused of having links to the Chinese military.
Days after announcing its plan to delist in the three companies on New Year's Eve, the NYSE said that it will reverse course after it had consulted regulators, including the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
The NYSE was then contacted by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin a few days later. Mnuchin criticized the exchange's decision to give the Chinese companies a reprieve and asked that it reconsider. The NYSE then decided to proceed with the delisting as planned.
The executive order resulted in massive fallout, with investors quickly selling off their stakes and index providers removing Chinese companies from their benchmarks. The NYSE's indecision has caused the three companies' share prices in the U.S. and Hong Kong to fluctuate wildly. In the final weeks of 2020, the three companies lost more than $30 billion in market value due to Trump's executive order.
Earlier in the month, the S&P, Dow, and the MSCI removed the three telecommunication companies from their benchmarks. The move erased a combined $5.6 billion from the Hong Kong-traded shares of the three companies.
