新三板挂牌企业退出做市:影响因素与经济后果

The Determinants and Economic Consequences of Companies Listed on the NEEQ Exiting Market Making Transfer

近两年来,新三板做市商制度遭遇了前所未有的寒潮,越来越多的已做市企业选择由做市转让转回协议转让。文章从我国现行的股票发行制度出发,实证检验了挂牌企业退出做市转让的影响因素与经济后果。研究发现,是否有IPO计划会显著影响新三板挂牌企业的退出做市倾向,拟IPO企业的退出做市倾向显著更强。这个结论在运用多种方法进行稳健性检验后依然成立。同时,受到市场普遍关注的股票流动性并不是挂牌企业退出做市的主要影响因素。退出做市对拟IPO企业的股票流动性存在显著的负向影响,而没有IPO计划的企业股票流动性则在退出做市后显著上升,这两类企业在退出做市日前后都存在显著为正的平均累积超常收益率。文章的研究对于我国多层次资本市场的建设与新三板市场的制度改革具有一定的启示意义。

Since NEEQ launched the market making mechanism officially in June 2014,listed companies can choose their stock transferring mechanism between market making transfer and negotiating transfer autonomously. Initially,market making transfer was considered as an important way to improve stock liquidity,even a symbol of high quality companies. At that time,it became a common trend for listed companies to implement market making transfer,resulting in the dramatic rise of both the number and proportion of market making companies. However,the market making transfer mechanism of NEEQ has becoming more and more unwelcome in the past two years. Not only the trading volume of market making transfer kept shrinking,but also many market making companies chose to return to negotiating transfer. It is generally believed that the severe illiquidity of NEEQ should be responsible for this phenomenon.This paper argues that the policy background of the capital market,especially the initial public offering system in China should be blamed for companies listed on NEEQ exiting market making transfer. The building of the multi-layered capital market in China is still exploring,so the connection between different layers is far from perfect. For pre-IPO companies listed on NEEQ,the implementation of market making transfer would bring a lot of additional obstacles on their IPO journey,including the number of shareholders,three special types of shareholders and the special regulation on stocks hold by state-owned market makers.Based on the current initial public offering system in China,this paper examines the determinants of companies listed on NEEQ exiting market making transfer empirically. The data used in this paper are all listed companies that implemented market making transfer between June 2015 and December 2016. The result shows that,pre-IPO listed companies are more likely to exit market making transfer. The result remains unchanged after a series of robustness checks,such as PSM and group regression,and it is shown that stock liquidity is not the main driving force of exiting. Lastly,this paper explores the economic consequences of listed companies exiting market making transfer. It turns out that:exiting market making transfer has a significantly negative effect on the stock liquidity of pre-IPO companies,while the stock liquidity of other listed companies improves significantly after exiting,and there is a positive average cumulative abnormal return for all listed companies whether are pre-IPO or not around the exiting day.This paper is of some significance to the building of the multi-layered capital market and the reform of NEEQ in China. On the one hand,policy-makers should pay more attention to the connection between different layers in the capital market and improve the consistency and continuity of policies and rules. The contradiction between the market making transfer mechanism and the initial public offering system faced by pre-IPO listed companies should be avoided. On the other hand,we should speed up the reformation and innovation of NEEQ,further enrich the types of investors,expand the sources of funding,strengthen the opening-up and international cooperation,and finally enhance the appeal for high quality SMEs.