Chinese stock market enters fast lane
Updated: 2007-12-22 12:43
With Pacific Insurance raising 30 billion yuan ($4.07 billion) this week, marking the year's last glamorous initial public offering (IPO), the construction of a fleet of blue chips has just begin.
An unprecedented scale of IPOs dominated the Chinese mainland stock market this year, raking in about $61 billion, nearly threefold of the floated value last year.
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However, a shocking 85 percent of the money was raised by only 12 major Chinese companies and banks.
Mostly state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the blue-chips flocked into the market and aroused waves of investor excitement. The listing of PetroChina alone raised 66.8 billion yuan, which became the world's biggest IPO this year.
But the government calls for even more.
Li Rongrong, head of China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) reiterated on Tuesday that China encourages eligible central administered SOEs to list on stock markets as a whole, or gradually inject their core assets into their listed arms.
China Securities Regulatory Commission Chairman Shang Fulin even invited overseas firms and Hong Kong-listed domestic companies to go public in Chinese mainland market earlier this month, and the Shanghai Stock Exchange said it was considering introducing international firms that perform well in China.
Of the 43 Hong Kong-listed SOEs, 13 have not gone public in mainland markets. They include domestic giants such as China Telecom and Dongfeng Motor Group.
Also, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is actively preparing for a NASDAQ-like growth board, which is expected to be established in the first half of next year.
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