The Hindu Business Line : US listing norms more reasonable: NYSE official

Recently in New York The regulatory regime for listing in the US is now “more reasonable” for overseas companies than a few years earlier, Mr Marc H. Iyeki, Managing Director, Asia-Pacific and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), International Listings, NYSE Euronext, has said.

The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) norms modified last year are no longer as burdensome as they are perceived to be, Mr Iyeki told Business Line, when asked how SOX had impacted listing interest in NYSE from overseas companies.

He, however, admitted that SOX, created in 2002 in the wake of financial scandals in the US, had slowed down the number of NYSE listings from overseas companies.

The SOX rules were modified last year as US regulators realised that the existing SOX norms were too harsh and this impacted listing interest. After the modifications, there are now more overseas companies approaching the NYSE for listings as the IPO market sees more activity in 2009.

“There is certainly a positive change this year in terms of the number of companies approaching us for listing. Last year was a little slow. Companies that planned but did not execute IPOs are coming back now,” Mr Iyeki added.

He said that the pipeline for the NYSE IPOs is robust this year and that there was strong interest among Chinese companies to list in NYSE. This year the NYSE IPOs had already raised about $7 billion, including $1.75 billion by Sterlite Industries (India) in June this year.