As Hong Kong prepares to allow companies with control structures to list there, analysts say Naspers might be tempted to consider moving its primary listing to the Asian city as pressure mounts on the media company to reduce its hefty valuation discount. Hong Kong, where Naspers’s crown-jewel Tencent is listed, recently launched rules that accommodate firms with dual-class shares, the funding structure frequently used by technology firms to shield them from hostile takeovers. Some investors, including many of Naspers’s backers, are critical of these structures as they give extra voting power to executives or related parties. Nevertheless, market regulators in Hong Kong, and more recently in Singapore, have agreed to allow groups with dual-class shares to list, partly in an effort not to fall behind New York, which has won over several of these Chinese listings. After Naspers’s management said in June it was evaluating several options to reduce the group’s valuation discount of more ...
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