Pre-holiday IPO rush may raise $910m

Fourteen companies are set to debut on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses on Tuesday, the final trading day before the markets close for the Lunar New Year holiday, and are forecast to raise about 5.6 billion yuan ($910 million).

Actresses Fan Bingbing and Zhao Wei, shareholders in Zhejiang-based Talent International Film Co Ltd, are likely to gain at least 10 times their initial investment as the company goes public at 22.83 yuan per share.

The two actresses own about 2.46 million shares of Talent International, which they bought at an average cost of 2.3 yuan per share, Chinese media have reported.

Based on the average price-earnings ratio of the industry, their holdings may achieve a 26-time gain in the secondary market.

Some analysts said that the liquidity-draining effect has been digested by the market, which is expected to stabilize and continue to rebound after the Spring Festival holiday.

"The capital tied up by the IPOs will likely flow back into the market. The central bank's policy of providing liquidity will also give a boost to the market," Zhang Yanbing, an analyst at Zheshang Securities Co Ltd, wrote in a note.

The Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.53 percent on Monday.

The market seemed to be reassured by the monetary authorities' intent to boost lending to support the economy, with higher-than-expected new loan growth in January, analysts said.

New credit surged 11.4 percent to a five-year high of 1.47 trillion yuan, according to the People's Bank of China.

Some investors remain wary of the stock market, with more IPOs in the pipeline as the regulator has said it will soon eliminate administrative restrictions on new share sales. China plans to introduce an IPO system based solely on registration, which media reports have suggested would start on June 1.

It has been reported that the China Securities Regulatory Commission would transfer authority to approve IPOs and refinancing applications to the stock exchanges. But the agency denied the reports.