Reform

The China Securities Regulatory Commission released a plan in November to overhaul the nation's IPO system. The reform was long awaited, as new IPOs have been halted by the CSRC for 14 months.

Money crunch

Rare money market turmoil in June saw some interbank rates soaring by a staggering 30 percent. The incident spooked investors and sent the Shanghai Composite Index to a low of 1,849 points on June 25. Rates went back up in December, but this time the central bank doused them with liquidity injections.

Everbright trading error

On Aug 16, Everbright Securities "erroneously" sent 26,000 "buy" orders to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which led to a sharp 5.6 percent jump in the Shanghai Composite Index.

Stemming from the incident, Everbright was fined 523 million yuan ($85.75 million) by the China Securities Regulatory Commission for insider trading, and its former president was barred from the industry for life.

Alibaba IPO

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group decleared that it would not list in Hong Kong and observers said New York could be the alternative market for its would-be listing.

A bone of contention between Alibaba and Hong Kong regulators was whether Alibaba could issue dual-class shares, a system adopted by Facebook that gives executive shares more voting rights than public ones. Hong Kong regulators said no even though Alibaba could be the biggest tech IPO.

American dreams

A slew of Chinese Internet companies pulled off successful IPOs in the United States this year, after market interest was crushed in 2011 by short sellers accusing Chinese companies of irregularities

Autohome, Sungy Mobile, 500.com, 58.com and Qunar all managed to maintain a buoyant post-IPO share price.

Brokerage consolidation

In November, Hong Yuan Securities Co Ltd agreed to merge with Shenyin Wanguo Securities, signaling a new era of consolidation in the brokerage industry.

The market share of China's top 10 brokerages is 42.8 percent, compared with 90 percent in the United States.

UBS trading incident

Chinese regulators vowed to penalize UBS Securities along with three other brokerages after a market slump in the last minutes of trading on Dec 20.

The sudden drop was caused by four brokerages' engaging in volume selling in response to requests from clients who were trying to adjust positions to track the FTSE Xinhua China A50 Index.