Twenty-eight companies halted their IPOs, according to filings to the nation’s two exchanges Saturday. A group of 21 brokerages led by Citic Securities Co. will invest at least 120 billion yuan ($19.3 billion) in a stock-market fund, the Securities Association of China said the same day. Executives from 25 mutual funds vowed to buy shares and hold them for at least a year, according to an industry group association.
 "Declines of such a magnitude are enough to trigger a financial crisis and the issue is now elevated to state level,” said Li Jingyuan, general manager of the securities investment department at Shanghai Zhaoyi Asset Management. "It’s about restoring confidence now.”
The weekend announcements come as the government battles to restore faith among the nation’s 90 million individual investors after a slew of measures by regulators, including a pledge to investigate market manipulation, failed to stem declines. The Shanghai Composite Index has tumbled 29 percent in the previous three weeks, helping to erase $3.2 trillion of value, on concern leveraged traders are liquidating bets after equity valuations exceeded levels during the country’s stock-market bubble in 2007.