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Taking stock

By Zhang Ran (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-17 09:53

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) CEO Duncan Niederauer (R) and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg smile as they attend a news conference before an opening ceremony of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Beijing Representative Office in Beijing December 11,2007. NYSE Euronext,parent of the New York Stock Exchange, on Tuesday opened its Beijing office, joining a march of bourses to China in search of potential new corporate listings. [Agencies]

Other overseas bourses, including those from Singapore, London and Frankfurt, offer mainland companies abundant alternatives. Following the NYSE and NASDAQ, the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Singapore Exchange have also been approved to open offices in China.

But as increased numbers of exchanges come to China, a majority of Chinese companies look to domestic listings. With markets and clients rooted in China, companies have begun to question whether it is necessary to go offshore, especially when excessive domestic liquidity is making money raised overseas harder to bring back and used at home.

"In choosing which market we should go to, I am not so much worried about how much money we can raise, rather whether it helps build our brand and contributes to our business model," Wu Yimin, president of Inforbird, a Beijing-based software company, tells China Business Weekly.

Wang Zhansheng, chief finance officer of Baidu.com, which was listed on NASAQ in 2005, has said several times that the company is interested in listing in Shanghai.

"Baidu.com should list on the A-share market because most of our clients are in China. We want them to share in the growth of Baidu." Wang says.

He adds that the government's tighter controls on foreign exchange capital inflow has made money from overseas much harder to use at home.

"The development of a strong domestic capital market is the best choice," says Wang, calling for the securities regulator to implement infrastructure that allows foreign-listed companies to come back as soon as possible.

The Chinese stock market was without doubt the most successful in raising funds in 2007. China is leading the global listing race with $91.3 billion from 213 issues, a comfortable lead over the $38.9 billon raised from 178 deals in the US, according to Thomson Financial.

The Chinese stock market is poised to launch $7.5 billion worth of new offerings from 14 deals before the year's end. If they are concluded, it will make China the world's largest single IPO market, worth $99.1billon.

Shanghai is already the world's top IPO exchange by proceeds, with $51.1 billion in IPOs from 20 companies. London and the NYSE follow.

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