(Yicai) Jan. 8 -- The Shanghai Stock Exchange has punished Fujian Provincial Port Group for illegally speculating in the stock of Industrial Bank after the lender’s shares surged by their daily trading limit before the market closed on the final trading day of last year.

The SSE has imposed a six-month stock trading ban on Fujian Provincial Port after the port operator and four majority-owned units bought 13.3 million shares of Industrial Bank in the closing call on Dec. 29 at prices significantly higher than it had traded that day, paying CNY216 million (USD30.2 million) for the stock, the bourse said on Jan. 6.

That constituted an abnormal transaction and severely disrupted the market order, the SSE said.

Shares of Fuzhou-based Industrial Bank [SHA: 601166] soared 10 percent to close at CNY16.21 (USD2.27) apiece on Dec. 29, while they did not fluctuate more than 1 percent during the hours before the closing call. The shares fell 0.7 percent to CNY14.70 today.

The SSE ordered Fujian Provincial Port, which is also based in the southeastern city of Fuzhou, to explain the reasons for the abnormal transaction. The company has not commented yet.

Fujian Provincial Port has a long-term credit loan partnership with Industrial Bank. It began to buy the lender's shares in August 2022, with its stake reaching 2.8 percent at the end of last November. Industrial Bank appointed Yu Zusheng, manager of Fujian Provincial Port's finance department, as a supervisor last May.

Fujian Provincial Port was formed by the merger of several state-owned port operators and logistics firms in Fujian province in August 2020. Its net profit was CNY1.1 billion (USD153.8 million) in 2022 on operating revenue of CNY67 billion (USD9.4 billion), while its assets reached more than CNY100 billion (USD14.1 billion), according to its website.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev