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By Yin Lei

Over 100 Chinese public companies had bought back their pledged shares last week, said a report of China Securities Journal on Monday.

As of the night of Oct. 18, at least 116 A-share companies had announced the redemption of their shares that were once used as collateral to obtain loans from their lenders, according to a survey of the journal.

One example is Shenzhen HeungKong Holding Co., Ltd., a real estate developer based in southern China. In the night of Oct. 18, this company announced that its controlling shareholder had redeemed 161 million shares of Shenzhen HeungKong Holding Co., Ltd., equivalent to one-sixth of its stake in this company.

There were also firms that chose to redeem their shares and then pledge them again.

The controlling shareholder of Misho Ecology & Landscape Co., Ltd., a company in eastern China operating ecological landscape construction business, recently regained 147.758 million shares from a broker and pledged 12.5 million of them to another lender that is dedicated to supporting China’s private companies.

Statistics of the financial data provider Wind available as of Nov. 16 showed that at China’s stock market, 644.43 billion shares, or 10.03 percent of its total share capital, had been pledged, with an aggregate worth of 4.54 trillion yuan (653.88 billion U.S. dollars).

The arrival of additional funds may explain the gush of such redemptions by A-share companies in some regions, said an investment professional of a prominent securities dealer in Beijing.

As risks associated with the pledging of stocks ease, the valuation of some quality individual shares and brokerage shares will see recovery, according to research by some Chinese financial institutions.