Construction Bank raises 8 b dollars in IPO
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-10-21 08:00

HONG KONG - China Construction Bank (CCB), the mainland's third largest lender, has raised 8.0 billion US dollars in its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong after pricing the shares near the top end of its range. AFP reported.

The share sale, the world's largest so far this year, has been priced at 2.35 Hong Kong dollars a year (30 US cents) toward the high end of the indicative price range of 1.90-2.40 dollars.

CCB, which concluded the subscription offering period for the retail tranche Wednesday, will begin trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange on October 27.

The retail tranche offering was 40-50 times oversubscribed, although this was slightly below the market's expectation for 60-80 times, market sources said Thursday.

Given the oversubscription, the number of shares offered to the public has been raised to 7.5 percent from 5.0 percent of the total number of shares on offer, the source said.

Of the total global offering of 26.49 billion shares, 25.16 billion have been allotted to institutions, with the remaining 1.32 billion earmarked for retail investors.

Credit Suisse First Boston Corp, China International Capital Corp and Morgan Stanley are the listing sponsors.

CCB will be the first of China's big four state-owned banks -- which includes Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China -- to list shares overseas.

In December 2003, the CCB and Bank of China received 22.5 billion dollars each to tidy up their balance sheets from Beijing.