Marco Rubio slams Didi’s list as ‘reckless and irresponsible’

A Chinese falcon in the U.S. Congress has torn down the list announced in the U.S. following the Didi Chuxing app’s initial wrongful public offering, as the debacle drew scrutiny in Washington.

Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican senator, told the Financial Times in a statement that it was “reckless and irresponsible” to allow Didi, whom he described as an “unaccounted for Chinese company,” to sell shares on the stock exchange. of New York.

He added that regulatory repression from Beijing which unleashed a brutality lowering the share price after the IPO “underscores even more the risks” for U.S. investors in Chinese companies.

“Despite the outcome of the action, U.S. investors still have no vision of the company’s financial strength because the Chinese Communist Party is preventing U.S. regulators from reviewing the books,” Rubio said. “This jeopardizes the investments of American retirees and desperately needs the US dollars in Beijing.”

Rubio’s comments highlight how the troubled IPO Didi could join new efforts in Congress to tighten vines on Chinese lists in the United States.

Last year, former President Donald Trump signed legislation that imposes tougher accounting standards on Chinese entities selling shares in the United States after a pit of support in Congress.

The law in effect prevents companies from entering the United States if they do fails to submit to verification from the Washington Public Accounts Accounting Supervisory Board, for three years in a row.

But Chinese officials in Washington believe the new legislation should serve as a starting point for a broader decoupling of capital markets between the two countries.

“This failure will only reinforce the decision of many on Capitol Hill and elsewhere to demand greater protection from American investors as well as Chinese companies in our capital markets,” said Roger Robinson, former chairman of the Commission. of Economic and Security Review of the US-China Congress.

Robinson, who is now executive director of RWR Advisory Group, a consulting firm in Washington, added that the episode served “as a new reminder to Wall Street of the whim of [the communist party’s] market interventions and the party’s total disdain for cascading disadvantages ”.

Washington’s focus on the Chinese listing in the United States was sparked after regulators accused Luckin Coffee, the Chinese coffee chain, of fraudulent investors, forcing the company to pay a $ 180m settlement. Earlier this year, Luckin archived for bankruptcy protection in the United States.

But while U.S. regulators during the Trump administration have taken a leading role in sounding the alarm over Chinese listings in the United States, the Biden administration has not yet reacted to the affliction Didi IPO. The U.S. Treasury Department declined to comment, as did the Securities and Exchange Commission.

More information from Kiran Stacey in Washington