AdChina, a China-based internet advertising platform part-owned by media group News Corporation, has withdrawn registration for a $100m flotation on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
News Corp’s News America subsidiary owned 9.2% of AdChina, according to its regulatory filing from the original listing document in February last year.
Venture capital firms GSR Ventures, Richmond Global and Norwest Venture Partners owned 29.9%, 14.9% and 10.9%, respectively.
Investment banks Goldman Sachs (Asia) and Credit Suisse were lead underwriters to AdChina’s initial public offering.
In its withdrawal notice, AdChina said it might list elsewhere, potentially in China.
News provider Fortune said there was an issue of China-based companies trying to list in the US.
“Here’s the situation in a nutshell: The Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] currently will not recognize work done by the Chinese affiliates of Big 4 auditing firms, due to concerns over possible fraud.
“The SEC has said it would accept the audits if it could review the underlying work product, but Chinese regulators say that domestic law prohibits the dissemination of such documentation.
“The impasse supposedly is being negotiated behind the scenes, although the SEC also sued the Big 4’s Chinese affiliates last December for allegedly violating US securities laws.
“In the meantime, companies like Shanghai-based AdChina are becoming collateral damage. It uses a Chinese affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers for its accounting, which means that it cannot get its registration statement made effective by the SEC – thus legally preventing it from completing a stateside IPO.”