China mulls pressing US IPO-bound firms to hand over data

Regulators want to bring in third-party monitoring firms to limit data transfer and avoid undermining national security.

As part of Beijing’s unprecedented scrutiny of private sector firms, Chinese regulators are considering pressing data-rich companies to hand over management and supervision of their data to third-party firms if they want US stock listings, sources said. The regulators believe bringing in third-party information security firms, ideally state-backed, to manage and monitor IPO hopefuls’ data could effectively limit their ability to transfer Chinese onshore data overseas, one of the people said. That would help ease Beijing’s growing concerns that a foreign listing might force such Chinese companies to hand over some of their data to foreign entities and undermine national security, added the person.