S&P Dow Jones Indices cancels decision to remove 3 China telcos from indexes

S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC has decided to retain the American depositary receipts of China Mobile Ltd., China Telecom Corp. Ltd. and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. in its benchmark indexes.

The stocks were scheduled to be removed from the indexes before the start of trading Jan. 7.

"These deletions are being cancelled following an announcement from the New York Stock Exchange that they will no longer be delisted [from the U.S. exchange]," S&P Dow Jones Indices said in an emailed statement.

The NYSE, which said Jan. 4 that it was abandoning its plan to delist the three Chinese telecom companies, still might go ahead with removing the companies at some point, Bloomberg News reported Jan. 5, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The exchange's original removal plan came after U.S. President Donald Trump last year signed an executive order that would ban Americans from investing in entities believed to have ties to the Chinese military.

S&P Dow Jones Indices previously removed a number of other Chinese companies from its indexes, including Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. Ltd. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., starting Dec. 21, 2020.

S&P Dow Jones Indices and S&P Global Market Intelligence are owned by S&P Global Inc.