No word yet on first post-moratorium IPO

Which enterprise will get to issue the first IPO after the top securities regulator's five-month moratorium on such deals? The market is still waiting to find out.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission will inspect 30 enterprises randomly picked from the IPO waiting list during the coming two months.

A CSRC spokesman said 110 pre-IPO companies have gotten permission to submit their financial reports.

This may signal that the IPO reopening will be postponed until the end of the second quarter, analysts said.

IPO approvals stopped at the end of December, when more than 800 enterprises had applied to go public. The first stage was self-examination by the intermediaries, including underwriters, financial companies and law firms.

So far, CSRC officials are still showing caution and trying to evade releasing any signals about a time frame to relaunch IPOs.

The top regulator's "policy haze" may either test the market's patience or drag the feeble stock index down further, said Zhu Mingyuan, assistant director of the Orient Futures Research Institution.

Last week, the Securities Association of China randomly selected 30 enterprises, about 5 percent of the IPO-waiting companies that have handed in self-inspection reports, to take in the CSRC special financial check procedure.

Among those, seven are applying for IPOs on the main board on the Shanghai Stock Exchange; 13 are for the small and medium-sized enterprises in Shenzhen; and 10 are for the Chinese Nasdaq-style board, ChiNext.

"Of course, every enterprise or its sponsor institution expected to be selected this time in the 'Lucky 30' will face more strict financial checks," said an analyst from Guotai Junan Securities Co Ltd who declined to be named.

The CSRC spokesman said that once problems in the financial reports are discovered, the commission will release the examination results and deliver punishment.