广州企业简介翻译公司：股东维权主义试水中国

Western shareholder activism arrives in China

股东维权主义试水中国

广州企业简介翻译公司：桑晓霓：一家纽约对冲基金与中国移动展开对话，试图说服这家净现金超过600亿美元的中国国企提高股东回报。

Activist hedge funds have experienced mixed results when they have pressed Japanese companies to improve returns to shareholders. Now one western fund has decided to try its luck with shareholder activism inChina.

当维权对冲基金敦促日本公司提高股东回报的时候，它们得到的结果好坏不一。现在，一家西方基金决定在中国试试股东维权主义的运气。广州企业简介翻译公司。

Indus Capital Partners, a New York-based Asia focused hedge fund, has entered into a dialogue with China Mobile — a Hong Kong and New York-listed state owned enterprise and the largest mobile company in the world with 826m customers — to see if global investors can get a mainland company to focus more on raising the payout to those who hold its stock.

总部位于纽约、聚焦于亚洲业务的对冲基金Indus Capital Partners已经与中国移动(China Mobile)展开对话，看看全球投资者是否可以让一家内地公司更加致力于提高股东回报。中国移动是一家在香港和纽约上市的国有企业，也是全球最大的移动公司，拥有8.26亿客户。

The experiment comes at a time when the government is assessing how to reform SOEs, which can sometimes be lean and profitable, but usually have objectives far different from companies in the capitalist west. “China Mobile is, despite outward appearances, as much a collection of bureaus as it is a proper company in a global sense,” says one investor.

在该基金展开上述举措之际，中国政府正在评估如何改革国有企业——这些企业有时也很精干而且盈利，但其目标通常与资本主义西方的公司非常不同。一位投资者表示：“尽管表面上像是一家全球意义上的正常公司，但中国移动实际上是（电信）局的集合。”广州企业简介翻译公司。

Even when the SOEs are listed and have all the trappings of a public company, including a board of directors and pay out dividends, they remain in the control of a party committee and exist as much to maintain employment and subsidise management as they do to pay dividends to shareholders. Today they remain in an uneasy state of transition, caught between the conflicting demands of the government and their outside shareholders.

即便在这些国企上市、并拥有公开上市公司所有特征（包括成立董事会和派发股息）的时候，它们依然处于党委的控制之下，它们的存在理由不仅是向股东支付股息，也是为了维持就业并且补贴管理层。如今，它们依然处于转型的不安状态，受到政府和外部股东相互冲突的要求的困扰。

Moreover, reforms that sound compelling can have perverse consequences. As part of the anti-corruption drive, for example, salaries of top managements at many SOEs have been cut. That can mean a return to former practices where officials supplement inadequate salaries by padding expenses.

此外，听起来令人信服的改革可能会造成意外后果。例如，作为反腐努力的一部分，许多国企最高管理层的薪资被削减。这可能意味着官员们重拾过去的做法，通过虚报费用来补充不够高的薪资。广州企业简介翻译公司。

Many of Indus Capital’s peers are cynical about activist campaigns in the Chinese context.

Indus Capital的许多同行对于中国背景下的维权努力表示怀疑。

“Activism in a Chinese listed state enterprise? I don’t see how it works,” says the founder of one equity hedge fund in Hong Kong.

香港的一家股权对冲基金的创始人表示：“中国上市国企的维权主义？我看不出它如何运行。”

“Who cares what minority shareholders think? The politics and the incentives are different. You have to figure out how Sasac (the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission) actually thinks and whether they will ever tolerate making it appear that a hedge fund caused change. There isn’t the basic trust.”

“谁关心少数股东想什么？政治和激励都不一样。你不得不揣测国资委(SASAC)的真实想法，以及他们会不会容忍对冲基金导致改变的印象。根本不存在基本的信任。”广州企业简介翻译公司。

From the outside, the argument in favour of greater payouts would seem compelling. Like many companies inJapan, China Mobile is cash rich. It has net cash in excess of $60bn. Yet it has cut its dividend for three years in a row (though it has kept its dividend payout ratio constant). Why it needs that much cash is not clear and it has also reduced its capital expenditure for the past three years.

从外部来看，支持提高股东回报的主张似乎很有说服力。与日本的许多公司一样，中国移动现金充足。它的净现金超过600亿美元。然而，该公司连续3年削减了股息（尽管它的股息支付率保持恒定）。目前尚不清楚中国移动为何需要这么多现金，过去3年里它还削减了资本支出。

Moreover,China’s telecoms services are already highly concentrated, making it unlikely that any further domestic mergers and acquisitions are coming that would require a big pool of capital. Although Beijing still backs acquisitions abroad, it is becoming more selective as it seeks to discourage capital outflows that could weaken the already vulnerable renminbi.

此外，中国的电信服务已经高度集中，使得需要大量资本的进一步国内并购不太可能。尽管仍支持海外并购，但中国政府现在越来越有选择性，因为它寻求防范资本外流，让业已弱势的人民币更加疲弱。广州企业简介翻译公司。

“Management reiterates the importance to reserve cash for future investment and the need to balance near term shareholders’ return with long term company growth,” a recent report from JPMorgan notes.

摩根大通(JPMorgan)最近发表报告指出：“管理层重申了保留现金用于未来投资的重要性，并表示有必要权衡短期股东回报与公司的长期增长。”

SoftBank’s acquisition of Sprint in theUSis a reminder that telecoms can be a challenging business. The government has allowed internet companies to challenge the SOEs (at least up to a point) so that, for example, Tencent’s WeChat app has already eroded China Mobile’s short message service. Most of the growth in revenues comes from declining pricing which drives data revenue growth, the report adds. Last year data revenues overtook voice revenues for the first time.

软银(SoftBank)收购美国Sprint提醒人们，电信业可能是一个具有挑战性的行业。中国政府允许互联网公司挑战国企（至少在某种程度上如此），例如，腾讯(Tencent)旗下的微信(WeChat)应用已经侵蚀了中国移动的短信业务。该报告补充称，大部分收入增长来自定价的不断下降，这推动了数据服务收入的增长。去年，数据业务收入首次超过了语音业务收入。广州企业简介翻译公司。

China Mobile’s expenses are large by western standards. For example, in 2015, there were some $11bn of only vaguely explained “other expenses” on its income statement, including “office expenses, travelling expenses, consumables and supplies”, according to the annual report. (This is despite the fact that Beijing maintains strict controls on overseas travel.)

按西方标准来看，中国移动的开销很高。例如，在该公司的年报中，2015年的损益表含有只是含糊解释为“其他费用”的约110亿美元支出，包括“办公费用、差旅费、消耗品和用品”。这还是在中国政府依然严格控制海外旅行支出的情况下发生的。

Since the government itself holds about 73 per cent of the shares, minority shareholders would seem to be aligned with the interests of Beijing, whose own finances presumably could use the inflows from greater dividend payouts. The self interest of both minority shareholders and the majority shareholders would seem to suggest that the idea has merit.

既然中国政府持有中移动大约73%的股份，少数股东貌似与中国政府利益一致，北京方面想必可以利用股息提高带来的进账来改善财务状况。少数股东和主要股东的自我利益似乎表明，这种想法还是有点道理的。

广州企业简介翻译公司