Aurelia Butler

As confirmed new COVID-19 cases surged to a record of 9,284 on Monday, resulting in 66 deaths, the health minister said that under the new measures, high-protection masks would be compulsory at supermarkets, public transport and eating establishments.Bars and restaurants will have to close at midnight and no standing customers at entertainment venues will be allowed. There will also be a maximum limit of six people per table.”If we find that these measures are not complied with we will ban music (at entertainment venues),” Health Minister Thanos Plevris told a news conference.The government also moved to restrict attendance of sports events to 10% of capacity or an upper limit of 1,000 people.Visitors at care facilities for the elderly will be permitted if they can furnish a negative PCR test taken within the previous 48 hours.Authorities had already tightened existing regulations last week, mandating mask wearing in open spaces and banning Christmas and New Year festivities.”We are entering the (period of) prevalence of the Omicron variant in Greece,” Plevris said.In the metropolitan Athens area the government plans to ask private sector hospitals to assist the public health system, if necessary, to cope with hospitalisations.Plevris asked those who will be celebrating New Year’s Eve to “protect their loved ones” and avoid contact if they expose themselves to public gatherings during the holidays.Greece already had in place restrictions on unvaccinated persons using outdoor or indoor venues. Last week, it ordered double masks or masks offering high protection for persons using public transport or in supermarkets.Health experts believe Omicron is more contagious than earlier strains of the coronavirus, but two studies in the past week suggest those affected were less likely to require hospital treatment. More

China said domestic firms must gain approval before they can list overseas if they operate in areas deemed off-limits to foreign investors, closing a loophole for the country’s tech groups to raise capital in the US without going through regulatory scrutiny at home.The National Development and Reform Commission, the state’s economic planning agency, said on Monday that local businesses in sectors with restrictions on foreign investment must now obtain clearance from “relevant” government departments before proceeding with overseas initial public offerings.The regulator also said that foreign investors would face a 30 per cent cap on their holdings of such Chinese companies when listing, and they would also be banned from operating and managing them. “The days of freewheeling overseas listings are gone,” said Li Chengdong, founder of Dolphin, a Beijing-based consultancy, who said “a nod from the Chinese government will be crucial for local firms to sell shares abroad”.The NDRC said Chinese companies in the affected sectors could still raise capital from abroad and that the new rule “has created policy space for [these firms] to list overseas”. Foreign investors are restricted from investing in certain sectors in China, such as internet companies, but have long used complicated legal structures called variable interest entities (VIEs) to bypass such constraints and raise capital from abroad. The policy move comes during a tumultuous time for many Chinese start-ups and follows an announcement from the country’s leading ride hailing app Didi Chuxing earlier this month that it would delist from the New York Stock Exchange, having previously gone ahead with its US IPO in June despite Beijing’s opposition over data security concerns.That saga led not only to an abrupt end of a boom in Chinese tech groups listing in the US but also cast a shadow over the future of companies structured as VIEs.Investors and analysts said the new policy had eased concerns that VIEs could be banned, preserving a critical source of financing for China’s tech start-ups.Li said the policy underscored efforts by Beijing to attract foreign capital while keeping a stronger grip on sectors deemed to be of strategic importance.“The authority is keen to prevent the Didi incident from happening again, but it wants to provide a lifeline for dollar-denominated investment funds which count on New York listings to exit, as they are a crucial financier of China’s homegrown innovation.”Some were cautious about what the overhaul would mean in practice. One Beijing-based private equity fund partner said he welcomed the new rule as it had made things “clearer” but added that it was less certain how the IPOs of companies initially denied permission to list would proceed.“There is a lack of transparency on what the review standards will be,” they said. “That worries us most.”Additional reporting by Ryan McMorrow More

Hong Kong (Reuters) – China will strengthen foreign exchange market monitoring and step up risk prevention and control in 2022, the country’s FX regulator said in a statement on Monday.In 2022, China will also promote cross-border investment of private equity investment funds, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said in the statement. More

The regulator will also suspend two XiamenAir flights from Los Angeles to Xiamen from the same date, the official news website under the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) reported.Ten passengers in total on Dec. 14 China Eastern and XiamenAir flights tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival in China, triggering CAAC to halt two subsequent flights, the website said. More