Attachment 1: Press Release of Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau

 

 

 

 Actively exert the effectiveness of request processing

 

 Continuously improve the level of investor service

 

In recent years, the Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau (hereinafter referred to as the Guangdong Bureau) has taken the handling of appeals as an important measure for investor protection, and has adhered to the work orientation of "conscientiously safeguarding investors’ rights and serving investors warmly and meticulously" by improving the standardization of appeals processing Level, build a diversified settlement channel for securities and futures disputes, deepen the service function of the request processing window, and strengthen the publicity and education of investors. Actively practice investor protection responsibilities, and be a good gatekeeper and patron saint of investors' legitimate rights and interests.

 

 

Keep improving, strictly control the quality

 

The handling of claims is related to the vital interests of investors. The Guangdong Bureau insists on putting the quality of appeal processing in the first place and strives for perfection to ensure that the processing results can withstand the test of time and can withstand the weight of the people.

 

In order to improve the standardization and refinement of the handling of claims, the Guangdong Bureau has researched and developed an electronic petition processing system with query, statistics, analysis and trace retention functions to ensure that each complaint and consultation matter is handled in strict accordance with the prescribed process and time limit.

 

The Guangdong Bureau implements a "dual core and double review" mechanism for investor appeals, that is, the legal system and relevant business offices cross-check the investor’s response letter, and the branch management bureau leader and the chief leader of the bureau will review and approve the investor’s response letter in accordance with the law It is in compliance with regulations, reasonable, and easy for investors to understand and accept.

 

The leading department of the Guangdong Bureau's appeal processing compiles the Daily Report on Complaints and Reports every day, and reports the appeals reflected by investors on that day to the business office, and draws them to pay attention in daily supervision. The leaders of the bureau have personally reviewed, supervised and checked major and complex requests. In the past three years, the main person in charge of the Guangdong Bureau has issued more than 100 instructions, requiring the relevant departments to carefully verify and properly handle them in accordance with the law.

 

For common complaints and consultation questions, the Guangdong Bureau, on the basis of continuously summing up experience, has formulated standardized response standards involving more than 60 types of questions involving 17 businesses, and repeated discussions and careful scrutiny of each response to ensure that the policies are in place. The guidelines are clear and clear, providing useful assistance to investors.

 

 

 

Warm service, and actively solve problems for small and medium investors

 

"Ya Zhai lying down and listening to Xiao Xiaozhu, it is suspected that it is a folk complaint." The person in charge of the Guangdong Bureau often emphasized that in order to implement the party's mass line in securities supervision work, it is necessary to completely change the style of work, strengthen the awareness of public servants, and achieve "investors as family members and investors' difficulties as family affairs." In daily visits, the Guangdong Bureau requires its staff to receive investors in accordance with the standards of "a smiling face, a greeting, a cup of hot tea, and a hot stool", so that investors can truly feel the warmth and care of the regulatory authorities.

 

 

In daily interviews, the Guangdong Bureau established the "zero rejection" working principle, that is, all kinds of complaints and consultation requests from investors cannot be simply rejected. For reasonable requests that fall within the scope of responsibility, it is required to "handle in place, explain in place, and provide assistance in place"; for matters that do not fall within the scope of responsibility, investors must also provide clear guidelines. For this, the Guangdong Bureau has collected nearly 70 The complaint and report telephone numbers of relevant departments are for investors' inquiries.

 

 

At present, there are 14 million investors in Guangdong's jurisdiction, accounting for about 1/10 of the country. Investors have active securities transactions, and there are many problems and disputes encountered in transactions. The Guangdong Bureau empathizes with the various difficulties of small and medium investors and actively lends a helping hand.

 

 

For example, the investor Bi had delivered a securities certificate worth several thousand yuan to an institution in Jinzhou, Liaoning for custody 20 years ago, and now he requests to coordinate the verification and redemption of a securities company in the jurisdiction that is the institution's takeover party. Despite many difficulties such as long time and incomplete historical data, the bureau actively coordinated relevant securities companies to carefully verify account information and finally complete the payment.

 

 

Another example is that investor Hu reported that he opened an account in a securities business department in Guangzhou many years ago. He has returned to Ningxia and is inconvenient to move. It is difficult to cancel the account. The Guangdong Bureau coordinated the Ningxia branch of the relevant securities company to help investors smoothly after learning the situation. Account cancellation.

 

 

The work philosophy of "emergency and service for the people" has been integrated into the daily work of the Guangdong Bureau and into the conscious actions of every supervisory cadre. Sincere dedication has shortened the distance between investors and the Guangdong Bureau. In 2014 alone, the bureau received hundreds of thank-you calls from investors, and some investors even made a special trip to present silk banners.

 

 

 

Innovate mechanisms and develop diversified dispute resolution mechanisms

 

Today, with a complex interest pattern in the capital market and increasingly diversified investor demands, it is difficult to effectively deal with the massive demands of investors with limited administrative resources. The Guangdong Bureau took advantage of the situation and actively transmitted pressure to market operators, and “leveraged” industry organizations, arbitration institutions, and judicial departments to build a diversified settlement mechanism for securities and futures disputes.

 

According to incomplete statistics, in 2014, under the supervision of the Guangdong Bureau, the securities and fund futures operating agencies in the jurisdiction alone compensated more than 900 investors for losses of nearly 5 million yuan through negotiation, mediation, etc.; compensation to investors for losses reached 1,600 through litigation and arbitration More than ten thousand yuan.

 

As early as the beginning of 2014, the Guangdong Bureau issued a notice to listed companies and securities, fund and futures operating institutions in its jurisdiction, requesting that the complaint handling mechanism be further improved in accordance with the spirit of the Guobanfa [2013] No. 110 document, and to effectively assume the responsibility of the main body of complaint handling and resolve conflicts. Hidden dangers are resolved at the source, and complaints and disputes are handled at the grassroots level.

 

 

The Guangdong Bureau instructed the Guangdong Securities and Futures Association to establish the Guangdong China Securities Investor Service and Dispute Mediation Center. 45 mediators who are familiar with the securities and futures business and related laws were selected and used to deal with various disputes through a combination of simple mediation and ordinary mediation. Mediation was conducted, and 293 securities and futures disputes were successfully mediated throughout the year. In addition, the center has also set up an investor dispute handling hotline, which serves as a special line for investor consultation and dispute mediation, and a dedicated person is arranged to answer, record and answer. The Guangdong Bureau has also signed a memorandum of coordination with the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court to make arrangements for the judicial confirmation of the mediation agreement to ensure that the mediation agreement can be effectively implemented.

 

In the first half of 2013, the Guangdong Bureau's appeal processing window suddenly received intensive calls from investors, intensively consulting on civil compensation claims for false statements by Foshan Lighting. Upon learning of this situation, the Guangdong Bureau immediately organized personnel to formulate relevant rights protection guidelines, successively answered questions raised by hundreds of investors, and guided them to appoint a lawyer or file a lawsuit to the court on their own. During the trial of the case, the Guangdong Bureau used its professional advantages to provide the court with the relevant loss calculation plan for its reference. At the same time, it also interviewed the senior executives of Foshan Lighting and asked the company to actively cooperate with the court to promote the smooth conclusion of the case. Under the vigorous promotion of the Guangdong Bureau, in November 2014, the relevant court made a first-instance judgment on the case and ordered Foshan Lighting to compensate the first 930 investors with a total of 59.31 million yuan. This is the largest civil case in the A-share market in the past 7 years. The claim was finally settled in the first instance.

 

 

 

Take precautions before they happen, appeal processing and investor education linkage

 

Information asymmetry, especially the insufficient knowledge and information of small and medium investors, is an important source of the high incidence of illegal securities and futures activities. Since 2013, the Guangdong Bureau has established a regular analysis mechanism for investor appeals, sorting out relevant risk matters collected in the appeal processing work on a monthly basis, and forming public welfare reminders through SMS, WeChat and trading software systems of more than 800 securities and futures operating institutions in the jurisdiction , Simultaneously send public welfare reminders to investors.

 

According to statistics, in 2014 alone, the Guangdong Bureau issued a total of 9 issues of public welfare information involving illegal securities risk warnings and 6 issues of public welfare information involving major market business risk warnings, and investors received a total of 75 million person-times.

 

Through this information, the Guangdong Bureau pointed out the manifestations and harms of illegal securities consulting, securities practitioners’ trading on behalf of clients, and reminded investors of the legal risks they need to understand when purchasing private equity funds and wealth management products. The list of illegal advisory institutions is directly made public, enabling investors to capture and understand major market risk information at the first time, and form a situation of "rats crossing the street and everyone shouting and beating" against illegal securities activities.

 

In order to adapt to the reading habits of investors in the information age, the Guangdong Bureau controlled mobile public welfare text messages within 80 words, and trade terminal public welfare information within 150 words, striving to make investors "read in ten seconds and have an impression in one minute" , Improve acceptance. Judging from random interviews with investors, up to 90% of investors said they “have an impression” or “have paid attention” to relevant public welfare information.

 

 

The working mechanism of "request handling-investor education linkage" has brought good results. For example, in terms of non-complaints, the number of complaints and reports received by the Guangdong Bureau in 2014 decreased by 84.7% year-on-year. Investors have identified illegal securities activities. Ability and self-protection capabilities have been significantly improved.

 

 

(Contributed by Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau)

 

 

Appendix 2: Typical Cases of Securities and Futures Appeals in Guangdong

 

 

Case 1:

 

Appeals for multiple overlays and solve the problems one by one

 

A listed company in Guangdong jurisdiction intends to provide several hundred million yuan of entrusted loans to participating companies, with an interest rate not lower than the benchmark interest rate for the same period of 115%. A related announcement was issued on May 24, 2014, and an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders is scheduled to be held on June 10. Deliberate relevant proposals through on-site voting.

 

After the announcement, small and medium-sized investors generally believed that the return rate of the transaction was too low, and there was suspicion of benefit transmission. At the same time, Company A still had some outstanding bank loans with higher interest rates. The transaction affected the income of the listed company. Therefore, many investors have asked Company A to open online voting to facilitate the majority of small and medium shareholders to exercise their voting rights. Company A refused to open it on the grounds that the relevant regulatory regulations did not clearly require this. Several investors subsequently called the Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau to make the same request.

 

The bureau immediately urged Company A to assume the primary responsibility for handling complaints, and pointed out to the company that although the regulatory laws and regulations did not clearly require that such matters must be opened for online voting, the State Council’s "On Further Strengthening the Legal Rights and Interests of Small and Medium Investors in the Capital Market" The "Opinions on Protection Work" clearly encourages listed companies to fully adopt online voting to convene shareholder meetings, and hopes that the company will re-study this matter. Under the guidance of the bureau, Company A added a supplementary announcement on May 29 to increase the voting method of online voting, and the appeal of small and medium investors was responded.

 

One wave was flat and one wave started again. Investors once again called the regulatory authorities to raise two demands, hoping that Company A would disclose the information of the borrower in this proposal in detail, and hope that the company's major shareholders would avoid voting on the proposal. In accordance with the requirements of the regulatory authorities, Company A issued an announcement on June 6, supplementing the disclosure of the borrower’s financial and equity structure information in response to the previously incomplete disclosure.

 

In order to establish a harmonious shareholder relationship, on the day of voting at the general meeting of shareholders, the company's major shareholders voluntarily abstained from voting in the absence of mandatory provisions in laws and regulations. When the small and medium shareholders actively voted against the proposal, it was not passed with 93.68% of the negative votes.

 

At this point, small and medium investors have effectively participated in the company's major investment decisions, giving full play to their active role in modern corporate governance, all appeals have been answered, and conflicts with major shareholders have been eased.

 

This case gives us at least two enlightenments: (1) Small and medium investors are increasingly concerned about the exercise of their voting rights, participation rights, and supervision rights. As a public company, a listed company should patiently listen to the demands of small and medium investors when making decisions on major issues and respect the right of small and medium investors to express their opinions. (2) Practice has proved that unblocking online voting channels is conducive to ensuring that small and medium investors can exercise their rights in accordance with the law. The Securities Regulatory Commission subsequently issued the "Rules for Shareholders' Meetings of Listed Companies", which clarified that the shareholders' meetings of listed companies shall adopt methods such as online voting in accordance with the law to ensure the convenient and efficient exercise of shareholder rights by small and medium investors. Investors should also actively participate in voting, express their wishes and voice in a rational and orderly manner, and safeguard their rights and interests in a legal and compliant manner.

 

(Contributed by Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau)

 

 

Case 2:

 

Risk mismatch should not be taken initiatively and should be affirmed

 

In June 2014, the Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau received an anonymous complaint from investors, reflecting that the sales department of a securities company in its jurisdiction had exaggerated returns, concealed risks, and invested in non-corresponding risk tolerance during the process of selling "A bond securities investment funds". The illegal behavior of recommending and selling the fund and ultimately causing investors to lose a lot of money.

 

After receiving the complaint, the bureau immediately sent personnel to the securities business department for on-site inspection, and during the inspection process, it notified the securities company headquarters of the relevant situation. The company attaches great importance to it and takes active actions. On the one hand, it appeases investors and urgently allocates risk compensation to relevant branches; on the other hand, the suitability of the product is sold, especially the product rating, promotional content and calibre, and customer risk matching. Conduct a comprehensive self-examination.

 

Through self-examination, it was found that the fund product was rated as "lower risk" in the company's internal risk rating, and the sales target should be customers with a risk tolerance level of "cautious" and above. However, in actual sales, there are hundreds of customers who are below the "cautious" risk level and have not confirmed the risk, and the subscription amount is relatively large.

 

The company further analyzed that such a serious appropriateness mismatch occurred mainly due to the following aspects: First, the company's wealth management headquarters did not clearly inform each business department of the fund's risk level when issuing the fund sales notice. Second, there are defects in the information system. The company provides two ways for investors to subscribe for the fund, off-market and on-site, but the client of the company's on-site subscription does not have the function of automatically matching and prompting investors to confirm risks, which leads to subscription through on-site channels Investors of the fund can only manually perform appropriateness matching and confirmation through the business department, and due to incomplete information and inadequate process execution, some business departments failed to carefully match investors and products, nor did they perform adequate risk warning and confirmation Responsibilities. Third, some business departments violated company regulations by hiring unqualified personnel to sell fund products, which reduced the standardization of sales behavior.

 

Based on the above factors, the company believes that there are omissions in the management and control of each process and link of its own sales suitability system, which together lead to the consequences of suitability mismatch, and it should bear the main responsibility.

 

According to the conclusions of the self-examination, the company has carried out risk warnings and appraisal and downgrading of the internal responsible departments, and imposed sanctions of notifications of criticism and deduction of bonuses on relevant responsible persons.

 

 

At the same time, in order to make up for the losses of investors and protect the legal rights and interests of investors, the company proactively provides a variety of remedial measures for investors to choose from, including successively issuing three phases of collective asset management plans to connect with the original fund; for those who are unwilling to accept product docking plans Customers, the company directly provides financial compensation according to the customer’s loss situation. Up to now, it has compensated 120 customers with a total amount of 1.05 million yuan. The company said that for subsequent complaints of the same cause that may occur, compensation will be made according to the same standard to ensure that investors whose rights have been damaged are compensated in place.

 

Although the company has certain problems in appropriate management, the company's attitude of taking responsibility afterwards should still be affirmed. At the same time, the case tells us: (1) Securities companies and their practitioners should treat "selling appropriate products to suitable investors" as their inherent obligation to overcome the inconsistency