economy - Debate on 'Sell-out' SOE's hits even Xinhua

China official newswire tells us today about a heated debate on whether listing state-owned companies abroad is a sell-out or not. Scholar Ji Baosheng, president of the People's University hits out:

He estimates 80 percent of them are high performing companies that hold monopolies in their sectors. Ji estimates that the IPOs undervalued these companies by at least 60 billion U.S. dollars, as most of these companies had stripped off their poorly performing assets before listing overseas.

I'm not sure who is right, but Xinhua does not mention one important party in those transactions: for the top-managers of those SOE's an IPO often means big money.