Abstract
Against the backdrop of economic globalisation, accelerated capital flows and frequent technology exchanges, more and more Chinese enterprises are choosing overseas listings to broaden their financing channels and realise their globalisation strategies through market expansion. The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), as the world's seventh-largest mainstream exchange in terms of market capitalization, has a lower listing threshold than the NASDAQ and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). China's SMEs that have financing needs and do not meet the requirements for listing in China have become increasingly enthusiastic about listing in Australia. By the end of 2023, more than 100 Chinese SMEs had listed in Australia, covering a wide range of sectors such as mining, finance, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Why do Chinese companies, especially Chinese SMEs, choose Australia as their listing venue? To this question, there are a large number of basic theories and conclusions in the theoretical community about the motivation of SMEs, centralised enterprises and large-scale enterprises to go public overseas, and most of these studies focus on exploring the factors that make it difficult for Chinese enterprises to raise capital. On this basis, this paper looks for the motivations for SMEs to go public in Australia from the external environmental factors of the listing location as well as the development needs of the enterprises themselves.
This paper will explore the characteristics of the Australian capital market on the basis of the theory of the basic motivation for Chinese enterprises to go public overseas and demonstrate how Chinese SMEs perform after listing in Australia through research methods such as empirical analyses and case studies, as well as analyse the multiple possible motivations for Chinese SMEs to go public in Australia through three representative cases. The study finds that there are three main motivations for Chinese SMEs to list in Australia: firstly, the strong financial market and relatively low market entry threshold; secondly, the enterprises' own financing needs and development strategy needs; and thirdly, the Australian market's acceptance and cultural resonance of listings in China's specialised industries.
The study of the motivation of Chinese SMEs to list in Australia has strong theoretical and practical significance. This paper focuses on Chinese SMEs as the main body of enterprises, and discusses in-depth their motivations for listing in the Australian stock market, which can provide other Chinese SMEs with similar conditions and motivations with references for the layout of listing strategies and the choice of listing venues, thus helping Chinese SMEs to alleviate a series of problems such as financing difficulties and obstacles to international development, and to increase their enterprise value. The uniqueness of the capital market is used to verify whether the findings of the research on the motivation of Chinese SMEs in capital markets other than Australia are applicable to the characteristics of the motivation of SMEs to list in this particular capital market in Australia. Hope this study could Provide a new research element to the existing theories. Clarifying the reasons for Chinese SMEs' Australian listings can provide a basis for China's policy makers to improve their domestic capital market and promote development.