- New York Regulator to Require Higher Standards for Coin Listings and Delistings The Wall Street Journal
- New York crypto regulator removes Ripple and Dogecoin from token ‘greenlist’ in latest update Fortune
- New York state regulator proposes tougher guidelines for crypto listings: CNBC Crypto World CNBC Television
- New York Financial Regulator Aims to Bolster Criteria for Coin-Listing, Delisting | New York Law Journal Law.com
- NYDFS calls for public feedback on proposed crypto regulatory guidance Cointelegraph
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: listings
Zelda amiibo Listings Surface Online Ahead Of Tears Of The Kingdom Release
Nintendo is launching The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in May of this year and it seems like there could also be a Zelda amiibo restock taking place ahead of this game’s release.
New pre-order listings for Nintendo’s existing Zelda amiibo line have surfaced on French e-commerce site fnac. According to the same listing, these amiibo will be re-released in France next month. Here’s the rundown of the possible restocks (via Nintendo Wire):
– Majora’s Mask Link
– Wolf Link
– Rider Link
– Archer Link
– Ocarina of Time Link
– Twilight Princess Link
– Pixel Link
– Guardian
– Wind Waker Link
– Skyward Sword Link
– Zelda – BoTW Version
– Zelda – Toon
– Bokoblin
– Zelda – Smash Bros.
In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, amiibo allowed the player to unlock special items and extra goodies on a daily basis. There’s been no mention of amiibo support just yet for Tears of the Kingdom, but if it was included, it wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise.
Nintendo is known to restock amiibo ahead of major game releases. Most recently, it restocked older Fire Emblem amiibo ahead of the Fire Emblem Engage launch later this month. This game will also include amiibo support. The Japanese company also did the same thing with the Splatoon line before the arrival of Splatoon 3 last year (another title to feature amiibo support).
More Super Mario Movie Jakks Pacific Toy Listings Surface On Amazon
Back in February, it was discovered Illumination’s Super Mario Bros. movie would be getting a toy line created by Jakks Pacific.
At the time, Amazon Canada listed a 5-inch Toad figure and a ‘Mini-World’ van playset, but no other details were attached. Now, months later – Amazon has some new listings for Mario, Luigi and Bowser. It seems the Bowser figure will be slightly different in size and weight.
There are still no images, but according to each description, these action figures will contain “premium details and textures”, “up to 12 points of hidden articulation”, a “movie accessory” and come in collectors packaging. Mattel also appears to be working on Super Mario movie products – with an Amazon listing in August suggesting a Mario movie UNO set is on the way. Learn more in our previous story.
Super Mario fans will finally get a first look at the Super Mario Bros. animated movie in a special teaser trailer premiering at New York Comic-Con on October 6th (aka next week). Mario’s voice actor Chris Pratt has already seen it and said he was “blown away”. Earlier this week, a blank but verified Super Mario Movie Twitter account was also spotted, and it’s already got more than 15K followers.
Would you be interested in Super Mario movie toys and action figures? What do you think they’ll look like? Comment below.
Super Mario Bros. Movie Figures Leaked by Early Listings
The currently untitled Super Mario Bros. movie from Nintendo and Illumination will unsurprisingly be accompanied by some tie-in figures according to some listings that appear to have gone up a bit ahead of schedule. Figures that we know about already based on these listings include one each for Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, and Toad. The only catch is that images pertaining to these listings haven’t actually leaked just yet, so we don’t know exactly what these new figures will look like.
These Super Mario figures come from Jakks Pacific based on the placeholder image used on Amazon with each of the listings for Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, and Toad all lumped under the “Super Mario Movie” category. A couple of limited details available through the listings confirm things like the fact that the products will feature “up to 12 points of hidden articulation” and that they all come with a “movie accessory.”
It’s evident that the listings are not entirely correct in their details, however, so it remains to be seen exactly what each toy will consist of. Most of them, for example, say that they were supposed to be released today on October 1st save for the Bowser figure which says it’ll be out on February 26th. Another minor detail shows that the Bowser figure weighs more than the rest of them, but we’d expect nothing less from Mario’s stout antagonist.
Jakks already has a lineup of Mario figures on its site that aren’t tied to the movie, so it’s not too surprising to see that the toy company is making these. It’d be difficult to believe that Nintendo would let the Super Mario movie go by without some kinds of tie-in products like these, and one would imagine that we’ll see much more in the way of this kind of thing between now and the time the movie releases on April 7th.
That release date is the second one the Mario movie got following its delay that pushed it out of 2022. The initial release date announcement was accompanied by cast details including the confirmation that Chris Pratt would voice Mario. We still haven’t actually seen our first look at the movie nor have we heard Pratt’s version of Mario yet, but that’ll hopefully change on October 6th whenever the first teaser trailer is revealed.
Across Minnesota, higher mortgage rates take a toll on home sales and listings
The doubling of mortgage rates over the past year is beginning to take a toll on home sales across Minnesota.
This week, mortgage rates topped 6% for the first time in 14 years as lenders continue leaping ahead of the expected hikes to the main rate set by the Federal Reserve.
On Friday, a new report from the Minneapolis Area Realtors showed the lowest monthly sales figure for any August in eight years and the lowest number of listings for any August in at least a decade.
“We’re seeing a less competitive landscape as the market has slowed given current interest rates,” said Denise Mazone, a Twin Cities real estate agent and president of Minneapolis Area Realtors. “But the silver lining is that a less frenzied market could spell more inventory and opportunity for persistent buyers.”
A similar story is unfolding across the state. St. Cloud experienced the steepest decline of all regions for home closures, a 26% year-on-year drop.
House prices are still rising, sales are happening quickly and sellers are still getting close to their asking prices. At the same time, entry-level and working-class buyers are having to stretch their budgets as they shop for a dwindling number of listings.
The move to a 6% mortgage rate from 3% a year ago has a bigger effect on monthly payments than most people think, said Chris Galler, chief executive officer of Minnesota Realtors.
“In most people’s minds, they go, ‘Oh, that’s only 3%,'” Galler said. “It’s not. You really have to look at the impact, which is that it’s 100% more interest.”
Because of that, the monthly payments on a $270,000 house today as the same as for a $310,000 house purchased a year ago. “That’s about $40,000 that they lost out on as far as buying capacity,” Galler said.
In the Twin Cities last month, buyers signed 4,981 purchase agreements, 24% fewer than last year and the lowest figure for any August since 2014, according to Minneapolis Area Realtors. Closings, a reflection of deals signed two to three months earlier, were also down by about the same amount.
The median price of those sales increased 5.6% to $369,750, the smallest annual gain since the summer of 2020.
There were also far fewer home sellers last month. In the Twin Cities, there were only 6,186 new listings, nearly 20% fewer than last year and the least for any August in a decade.
The trends were similar statewide, according to Minnesota Realtors. The group said closings were down 17% with the median sales price increased 4.4% to $330,000. New listings were down 19%. St. Cloud saw a 32% drop in listings.
The market slowdown isn’t all bad for potential buyers. In this market, sellers will likely spend more time and money making sure their house is in good condition, Galler said. And because there will be fewer multiple-offer situations, buyers can insist on housing inspections — a practice some buyers skipped as a way to improve their offer during the height of the homebuying frenzy last year.
“I wouldn’t call it a buyer’s market yet,” said Shawn Hartmann, a Twin Cities sales agent. “But it’s ranging toward a balanced market.”
Most of Hartmann’s clients are shopping for houses priced at less than $500,000 and those are the buyers who have been most affected by higher rates.
Upper-bracket sales are still strong. While closings of houses priced at less than $500,000 are down compared with last year, closings on homes priced at more than $500,000 have been up nearly double-digits compared with last year.
That’s in part because there are fewer options for entry-level buyers, but also because those buyers are most affected by higher mortgage rates. Redfin said Friday that cash purchases remain above pre-pandemic levels with a quarter of all homes in the Twin Cities being bought with cash during July.
Hartmann said properties that are competitively priced, in top-notch condition and in good locations are still in high demand. He recently got a dozen offers for way more than the asking price on a midcentury modern house near Como Park in St. Paul.
It sold for $120,000 more than the $535,000 asking price at the end of last month.
The deal was something of an anomaly, Hartmann said. Demand for housing typically slows during fall, but that decline is more pronounced this year. He said that as mortgage rates increase he’s starting to hear from more would-be sellers than buyers.
“When we have more people talking about selling than buying it gives me some indication that the market could be changing up a bit,” he said. “And right now more people are interested in selling.”
Wife of Million Dollar Listing’s Matt Altman Arrested
The wife of Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles‘ Matt Altman is facing legal trouble.
Johanna Altman was arrested on Aug. 4 and charged with felony domestic violence according to booking records obtained by E! News. She was released on a $50,000 bond the following day.
Matt told E! News in a statement on Aug. 17, “We ask everyone to please respect our privacy on this. Since my wife lost her father a few months ago to Covid, we as a family have been struggling with that loss and going through a difficult time because of that.”
“It’s very sad to lose a father unexpectedly,” Matt continued. “We have been working through it and it has made us stronger than ever now.”
The real estate agent—who has appeared occasionally on Million Dollar Listing: LA alongside his brother, Josh Altman, a main cast member on the series with whom he owns and operates a firm—and Johanna have been married since Aug. 2017 and share three children, 4-year-old twins Ashton and London, and 2-year-old Hudson.
Alibaba, others stocks sink after U.S. says speculation on China stock listings premature
maybefalse/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images
Update 11:52am: Adds confirmation of statement from PCAOB, talking points at bottom.
Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and several other Chinese tech stocks dropped after a report that the U.S. audit watchdog said speculation on a deal that would prevent hundreds of Chinese companies from being removed from U.S. exchanges is “premature.”
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said that while its meeting with Chinese regulators, it’s not clear if Chinese authorities will agree to permit U.S inspectors to fully review audit papers of companies, the PCAOB said in statements confirmed by Seeking Alpha. The regulator said a potential agreement would be a “first step.” The story was earlier reported by Bloomberg News.
The PCAOB comments come after China’s Vice Premier Liu He made comments last week in an attempt to calm investor fears and said it would continue “to support various types of companies to list overseas,” noting that it would work with U.S. regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission on the matter.
“While we will continue our work to find practical solutions to address the concerns of PRC authorities, ultimately, full access to relevant audit documentation is necessary to carry out our mandate on behalf of investors,” the PCAOB said in the statement. “This is not negotiable, even with respect to issuers in sensitive industries.”
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Alibaba (BABA), JD.com (NASDAQ:JD), Baidu (BIDU) and other Chinese U.S.-listed tech firms have been told by Chinese regulators to prepare for more audit disclosures,
Earlier this month, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other agencies reached out to these companies and asked them to prepare audit documents for 2021.
Alibaba (BABA) fell 3.6%, JD.com (JD) dropped 6.5%, Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) slipped 2.9% and Pinduoduo (NASDAQ:PDD) declined 7.5%.
Shares of other companies, such as Tencent (OTCPK:TCEHY), Kingsoft Cloud (KC), Huya (HUYA), DouYu (DOYU), Dada Nexus (DADA), Baozun (BZUN), Bilibili (BILI), KE Holdings (BEKE), Joyy (YY), NetEase (NTES), Zhihu (ZH), Trip.com Group (TCOM), iQIYI (IQ), Hello Group (MOMO), Vipshop (VIPS) and Dingdong (DDL) also fell on Thursday.
Alibaba and other Chinese ADRs and Internet stocks have whipsawed around in recent weeks, which started on March 10 when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission named five companies from China that could be de-listed for failing to abide by U.S. accounting regulations.
See below for the talking points from the PCAOB.
- Speculation about a final agreement between the PCAOB and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) authorities on PCAOB access to audit firms headquartered in China and Hong Kong is premature.
- We continue to meet and engage with PRC authorities in an effort to achieve a cooperative agreement that provides the PCAOB with the access required to inspect and investigate completely auditors headquartered in mainland China and Hong Kong. We appreciate the engagement of the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission and Ministry of Finance to work through several important threshold issues, though it remains unclear whether the PRC government, as a whole, will agree to permit and facilitate the access we require.
- The PCAOB’s requirements are straightforward, including the ability to inspect or investigate completely any audit engagement within our mandate, regardless of the issuer’s location or industry. This requires full access to audit work papers, firm personnel, and any other relevant information related to such audit engagements. Restrictions on PCAOB access to firms that have registered voluntarily with the PCAOB and that have chosen to perform required audits of companies that avail themselves of U.S. capital markets and are subject to U.S. federal securities laws deprive investors and the public of the benefits of the protections resulting from the work the PCAOB performs on behalf of investors.
- While we will continue our work to find practical solutions to address the concerns of PRC authorities, ultimately, full access to relevant audit documentation is necessary to carry out our mandate on behalf of investors. This is not negotiable, even with respect to issuers in sensitive industries.
- The Sarbanes-Oxley Act provides strong confidentiality protections and creates a privilege for any information received or prepared by the PCAOB in connection with an inspection or investigation. The strength of these protections has provided a strong foundation for cross-border cooperation with other audit regulators around the world, including full access to the documentation of the work and conclusions of auditors under inspection or investigation.
- It is important to note that reaching an agreement, while an important and necessary first step, will not alone satisfy the requirements of the HFCAA. If an agreement is reached, we will then proceed with our inspection and investigation activities to determine if the agreement operates as intended such that we actually are able to inspect and investigate completely, in the long term, in mainland China and Hong Kong. An agreement without successful execution will not satisfy U.S. law.
- The PCAOB’s mandate includes overseeing the audits of public companies and SEC-registered brokers and dealers in order to protect the interests of investors and further the public interest in the preparation of informative, accurate, and independent audit reports. Public companies that have chosen to avail themselves of the U.S. capital markets are required to be audited by audit firms registered with the PCAOB. The PCAOB must be able to inspect and investigate these audit firms completely, regardless of where the audit firms or the public companies they audit are located. All firms auditing public companies must play by the same rules.
U.S.-listed Chinese companies need Beijing’s approval for secondary listings
An investor sits in front of a board showing stock information at a brokerage office in Beijing, China.
Thomas Peter | Reuters
BEIJING — If U.S. regulation forces Chinese companies to delist from New York, new rules from Beijing further complicates their path to raising money in public markets abroad.
Since Tuesday, new rules from the Cyberspace Administration of China require Chinese internet platform companies with personal data of more than 1 million users to get approval before listing overseas.
While the rules do not apply to companies that have already gone public, those pursuing dual or secondary listings overseas must follow the CAC’s new approval process, according to a CNBC translation of a Chinese article published Thursday on the regulator’s website.
It’s yet another consideration for international investors looking at Chinese companies.
“The timetable for companies’ overseas listings has become longer, and uncertainty has increased for listing,” said Ming Liao, founding partner of Beijing-based Prospect Avenue Capital, according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese remarks.
As regulators and businesses figure out how the new measures will be implemented, institutional investors hope to better understand the government’s thinking by seeing some approvals for overseas listings, he said.
Fallout from Chinese ride-hailing app Didi’s U.S. IPO in late June prompted Beijing to increase regulatory scrutiny on what was a rush of Chinese companies looking to raise money in New York.
Chinese IPOs in the U.S. have essentially dried up in the months since, while existing U.S.-listed Chinese stocks face the threat of delisting in coming years from Washington’s more stringent audit requirements.
Several of these Chinese companies, including Alibaba, have turned to Hong Kong for dual or secondary listings in the last few years. That way investors could swap their U.S. shares for ones in Hong Kong in the event of a delisting.
The Hong Kong option
Only about 80 of 250 U.S.-listed Chinese companies would be eligible for a secondary or dual primary listing in Hong Kong, according to China Renaissance analysis from Bruce Pang and his team in January. That’s due to stringent requirements in Hong Kong for minimum market capitalization and other factors.
The remaining U.S.-listed Chinese companies would likely only have the choice of privatizing, and then attempting a listing in the mainland A share market, the report said. “In practice,” the analysts said, “we think Hong Kong will not be exempted from the cybersecurity process – the door is still open, in our opinion, for Beijing to impose a cybersecurity review on proposed listings in Hong Kong.”
The mainland market is less accessible to foreign investors and is dominated by more sentiment-driven retail investors.
Analysts also point out the Hong Kong stock market doesn’t compare with New York when it comes to trading volume and the price tech companies can get for their shares.
It remains to be seen to what extent cybersecurity scrutiny will apply to future Chinese stock offerings in Hong Kong.
U.S.-listed, China-based companies that pursue secondary or dual listings in Hong Kong only need the CAC’s review if the regulator identifies a national security risk related to the companies’ products or data processing, said Marcia Ellis, global chair of the private equity group at Morrison & Forrester, Hong Kong.
That’s “a different threshold” from the CAC review required for listings outside of China in markets such as London or Singapore, Ellis said. In these cases, companies with personal data on more than 1
million users would need CAC approval before going public.
“Effectively CAC’s latest statements just clarified a couple of matters and plugged up some potential loopholes,” she said.
The latest CAC regulation does not mention Hong Kong.
However, in Thursday’s article, the regulator said its new overseas listings regulation “does not mean operators in the process of listing in Hong Kong can ignore the relevant network security, data security and national security risks.”
Days after Didi’s listing, the CAC ordered the company to suspend new user registrations and remove its app from app stores, while the regulator began a cybersecurity review over data privacy concerns.
In December, Didi announced it planned to delist from New York and relist in Hong Kong. The company has yet to confirm when that transition would occur, and it’s unclear whether the cybersecurity review has ended.
Shares are down more than 14% so far this year, after a drop of 64% in the roughly six months of 2021 trading.
China proposes tighter rules but no ban for offshore listings
BEIJING, Dec 24 (Reuters) – China’s securities watchdog on Friday proposed tightening rules governing Chinese companies listing abroad, which it said would improve oversight while allowing them to continue to do so, the latest in a spate of regulatory moves by Beijing in 2021.
The draft rules, which had been keenly awaited by investors and were posted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission on its website, extend the CSRC’s oversight of offshore listings to Chinese firms with variable interest entity (VIE) structures.
There had been much uncertainty among investors and Chinese firms over how much tighter the new rules would be.
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“China is tightening the screws on offshore listings but not turning the valves off completely,” Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research, said of the plans.
The CSRC said that the existing rules regulating offshore listings were outdated and the proposed new ones reflect China’s desire to further open up and are “not about policy tightening”.
Previously, the regulator would only examine companies incorporated onshore in China that proposed an offshore listing, such as in Hong Kong.
Beijing has unleashed a flurry of regulatory tightening this year under President Xi Jinping, including clamping down on anti-competitive behavior, banning private tuition groups and reining in a debt binge by property developers in a wide-ranging campaign that has rattled domestic and global markets.
VIEs have mostly been used by companies that list on offshore stock markets, primarily the United States, to skirt Chinese rules restricting foreign investment in sensitive industries such as media and telecommunications.
Most offshore-listed Chinese tech firms, including Alibaba Group Holdings and JD.com Inc , use the structures, which give them more flexibility to raise capital, while also bypassing the scrutiny and lengthy IPO vetting process that locally-incorporated companies have to go through.
“The real key is how much data needs to be retained, location of servers, and whether the U.S. or China has responsibility for accounting,” Collier said.
CSRC said the proposed registration process should take up to 20 working days if adequate materials were submitted.
It will also require international banks that underwrite a Chinese firm’s offshore listing to register with the CSRC.
DIDI IMPACT
Offshore IPOs have provided an alternative source of capital for Chinese companies and a New York listing has been seen as a badge of honor for many.
But Beijing has been ramping up supervision of overseas listings since the $4.4 billion initial public offering (IPO) of ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc (DIDI.N) and the proposals on Friday were not as stringent as some had expected.
Chinese firms have raised about $12.8 billion in U.S. listings in 2021, according to Refinitiv data, but the deals ground to a halt after Didi’s debut in New York in early July.
The CSRC said Chinese regulators respected the choices made by companies on listing locations and the rules would not be retroactively applied, adding that it would not consider whether firms met the requirements of overseas listing locations.
But the Chinese government can order a company to dispose of its assets or businesses if its offshore listing jeopardizes national security, according to the proposed new rules.
The announcement came as U.S. markets were closed on Friday for the Christmas holiday period.
In a VIE, a Chinese firm sets up an offshore company for an overseas listing that allows foreign investors to buy into it.
The offshore company enters into a series of contracts with the owner of the local Chinese company, which operates the business in China, to obtain 100% economic interest in that business, analysts have said previously.
Chinese IPOs on all world markets have reached a record $100 billion this year, Refinitiv data showed.
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Reporting by Kane Wu, Samuel Shen, Selena Li, Julie Zhu; Beijing Newsroom; Writing by Scott Murdoch and Tom Daly; Editing by Alexander Smith
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Google’s plans for Fuchsia OS teased in job listings
Google says “it’s time” to now bring its mysterious Fuchsia operating system to “additional smart devices and other form factors” beyond smart displays, according to a number of job listings first spotted by 9to5Google. Fuchsia is Google’s newest operating system which was released earlier this year for the company’s first-generation Nest Hub.
There’s been a lot of speculation about Google’s plans for Fuchsia, which unlike Android and Chrome OS doesn’t use a Linux kernel (it uses a microkernel called Zircon instead), and whose purpose is still fairly vague despite having been public for over five years. When it arrived on the Nest Hub it was more or less functionally identical to the software that preceded it. The new job listings offer some clues about what’s next for Fuchsia.
For starters, it seems like Google now has a named “Fuchsia Devices team” working on the operating system, which gives some indication of the importance of the software internally. A job listing notes that this team “is responsible for making sure we can successfully apply the Fuchsia platform to real world products that make a difference to Google and our users.”
Meanwhile, this same listing notes that Google is working to bring Fuchsia to “additional smart devices and other form factors,” which confirms it’s under development for devices beyond smart displays. This isn’t entirely surprising given 9to5Google has previously reported on the OS running on smart speakers.
There’s no mention of what exactly these new form factors are, but another of the job listings (which has since been removed) spotted by 9to5Google mentions the devices will feature “Chromecast, Video Conferencing and Machine Learning” capabilities. In this context, 9to5Google notes that “Chromecast” is likely to refer to the devices letting you “cast” a video from another device for playback, rather than the dedicated Chromecast dongles that plug into the back of a TV.
Finally, there’s a tantalizing hint that Fuchsia could either run or interact with non-Google partner hardware in a third job listing for someone who’ll “ensure that Fuchsia is bringing maximum value to partners and Fuchsia-based products.” Google has a long history of working with partners to bring Google software to non-Google hardware, and has previously partnered with companies like JBL and Lenovo on their smart displays.
None of these hints offer concrete information about what’s next for Fuchsia. But given how low-key the operating system continues to be five years after its announcement, we’ll take what we can get.