Tackling stock market irregularities

The head of China's securities watchdog, Xiao Gang, knows something that his agency needs: a few good men.

Xiao has talked openly about the difficulties the China Securities Regulatory Commission faces in combating stock market vagaries, and he has made it known that he is seeking to recruit 600 professionals, trained in accountancy or law, to be investigators. The new recruits will more than double the number of investigators at the agency, and they will account for 40 percent of the staff, compared to 32 percent in the commission's counterpart in the United States.

It is not clear how such an ambitious staff expansion plan can be achieved, given the budgetary and bureaucratic constraints the commission faces, but it can be assumed that Xiao has obtained the approval from higher levels - the regulatory commission reports directly to the State Council - to go ahead with his plan, the urgency of which has been highlighted by the Everbright Securities fiasco that exposed the myriad irregularities that exist in the Chinese capital market.