On May 18, China Southern Airlines said its shareholders have approved long-delayed reforms to its shareholding structure.

The company had said in April it would offer public shareholders warrants equivalent to 1.6-for-10 bonus shares and promised that its cash dividend to all shareholders would be no less than 50 percent of its annual net attributable from 2007 to 2009.

In a brief statement on May 18, the company did not say when the reforms would take effect, but companies usually implement the reforms within one month after shareholder approval.

China Southern, China's largest airline by fleet size, had missed a January deadline for adopting rules to make its state-held shares tradeable on the market, subjecting it to trading restrictions on the Chinese stock market.

The company said at the time that government restrictions requiring state control of key companies made it unable to reduce the state-owned shareholding, and that its parent lacked sufficient cash and other resources to compensate public shareholders for any dilution to existing shares that would occur if state-owned shares became tradeable.

Regulators had set the end of 2006 as an informal deadline for companies to launch the reform, which commonly involves compensating public shareholders with bonus shares or cash for the dilution of their stakes.

China Southern reported a net loss of 188 million yuan (US$24.5 million) for the first quarter, down from a 603 million yuan loss a year earlier, after having edged into the black for 2006. (US$1=7.668 Yuan)