The reason for the company's stock trading being subject to other special treatment has been eliminated.

Yesterday, ST Air China announced that the company had applied to the stock exchange last April 19th to withdraw the application for special treatment of its stock trading. However, the application was not approved by the exchange.

After removing the "ST hat" a year ago, ST Air China formally "wears the hat" again today and changes back to "Air China."

According to the "Shanghai Stock Exchange Listing Rules", the company's A-share stock will be suspended on May 27th, 2010. Starting from May 28th, 2010, the abbreviation of the company's A-share stock will change from ST Air China to Air China, and the daily price fluctuation limit of the company's A-share stock will also be restored from 5% to 10%.

The abbreviation is restored to Air China.

Due to a record-breaking loss of 13.828 billion yuan in 2008 and a debt exceeding assets by 11.59 billion yuan, the audited shareholder equity of the company as of December 31st, 2008, was negative. According to relevant regulations, the stock trading of Air China was subject to other special treatments starting from April 17th, 2009, and thus it was marked with the "ST" label.

However, after government capital injection and internal reforms, Air China achieved profitability in both this year and the first quarter of the previous year. The net profit for the first quarter of this year was 770 million yuan, an increase of about 18 times compared to the same period last year. The debt-to-asset ratio dropped from over 115% to around 95%, reversing the situation of being insolvent. The audited归属 (attributable) shareholder equity of the listed company as of December 31st, 2009, also turned positive from negative. Therefore, the reasons for the stock being subject to other special treatments have been eliminated.

Original reporter: Chi Qunjie - ST Air China wears the "hat" again today.