| The information asymmetries of security markets and the high risks of the second board have pushed the systematic innovation, which results in the sponsor's system. The system is usually established in the second board.In sponsor's system, the sponsor is a special legal body boasting of strict requirements and overall professional responsibilities, which is not only correlated with, but distinguished from listing referees, distributors, agents, guarantors, etc. as well, whose unique characteristic is that he/she has a strict qualification, an overall and longer duty time and that he/she bears strict legal responsibilities.The sponsor has a special legal status in the stock market, who is not only the agent of his/her subjects sponsored, but also the supervisor of his/her subjects sponsored. He/She is also put under the double supervisions of the security regulators and stock exchanges. In all legal relations, the sponsor's most essential identity is that he/she acts as the guarantee obligator of his/her clients' disclosure of legal information.Sponsor's system undoubtedly plays an extremely important role to the sound development of the security market and to the protection of the investors' interests with its functions of conducting, combining and controlling. However, everything has two sides in the world, so does the sponsor's system, which has both merits and deficiencies. The establishment of the sponsor's system will increase the moral risks of security market and the costs of law-abiding, and will possibly aggravate the activities of rent-seeking in the security market. These will hinder the sound development of the security market and damage the investors' interests.The sponsor's system set up in the UK's AIM market, Hong Kong's GEM market and the second board affiliated to Canada's TSE market is comparatively matured. These markets have designed a whole set of systems for the sponsor'squalification condition, responsibilities for the subject sponsored, and has successfully achieved the supervision of the sponsor, which has guaranteed the full play on function of sponsor's system. Those are meaningful for China to further perfect the sponsor's system.The sponsor's system has already established in China, which is a revolutionary reform of the country's stock-issuing system and is also an important measure taken by its stock supervisory committee to further protect the legal interests of the investors, esp. those public ones, to improve the qualities of those listed companies, in accordance with the characteristics of its security market, i.e., "newly built in addition to transition" and, in accordance with the overall situations of the developments of its capital market. However, the " Temporary Regulations on The Sponsor's System in Security Market" still has many shortcomings: As to the sponsor's requirements, the requirements of a sponsor's liability are too low, and some specific clauses are unclearly defined, lacking of practical uses. As to the sponsor's duties, the responsibilities between a sponsor and an intermediate or a subject sponsored are still vague; the duration of responsibilities is relatively short; the exemption of responsibilities is unclear; the sponsor's rights and responsibilities are unbalanced. As to the supervision of the sponsor, the sponsor's continuous qualification is not fully supervised; the legal body of supervision is incomplete; the punishment against those sponsors who violated regulations is not strict, lacking of the system to force them to bear civil legal responsibilities.In order to perfect China's sponsor's system, first, the supervision to the sponsor's qualification must be strengthened; the requirements for being a sponsor must be raised; the demand for sponsor's independence must be perfected and the prohibition to enter the security market must be established; second, the sponsor's duties must be strengthened; the standards of dedicated investigations must be set up; the responsibilities between a sponsor and an intermediate or a subject sponsored must be clarified; the reasonable durations of responsibilities must be fixed; the sponsor's rights must be added; third, the security supervisory system must bereformed; the functions of the self-regulating and self-supervising of the trade must be fully utilized; and most important of all, the legal status of the self-regulating and self-supervising of the security market must be clarified at present; finally, the legal responsibility system of the sponsor must be perfected, esp. the system to force the sponsors to bear legal civil responsibilities must be established in order to strengthen the punishments to those who violated regulations, in order to raise the sponsor's cost of violating regulations, in the end, in order to guarantee the full play of the function of sponsor's system. |
