The China Europe International Exchange (CEINEX), the joint venture between Deutsche Borse, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and China Financial Futures Exchange (CFFEX), is set to launch D-shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as early as June, effectively duplicating Hong Kong’s H-shares.

D-shares, with the ‘D’ standing for Deutschland, is the European version of Hong Kong’s H-shares, which are dual-listed stocks or secondary listings by top Chinese A-share companies.

The first D-share IPO may be announced in March-April, part of the initial batch of three D-share companies that may be listed this year, according to Sascha Dettmar, spokesman for CEINEX. Dettmar was in Hong Kong to attend the Asian Financial Forum held on January 15-16.

“We’re looking strictly at real economy manufacturing businesses like energy, telecommunications, transport, logistics and consumer. We’re not eyeing Chinese technology or internet companies, not the Alibabas and Tencents, or financials, so no ICBC or Bank of China,” Dettmar says.

This strategy is contrary to a growing trend for investment in financial technology and internet companies in China which have been designated as the “new economy”.

The D-shares will be traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and regulated by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), Germany’s securities regulator.

Its target investors are European investors and fund managers who do not have the means to access the China market directly or through the Hong Kong market.

For Chinese companies the advantage of listing in German D-shares is the easier access to European investors, since D-shares will be traded in the European time zone, as well as the prestige that comes with their compliance to the higher regulatory standards traditionally associated with German regulations.

“The companies that are doing it will have the added advantage of gaining the trust of European and international investors. D-shares, as the H-shares, will have voting rights in the general assembly, so they will be one share, one vote. They will have all the rights in the Chinese companies as the H-shares,” says Dettmar.