Renhe Commercial Holdings, the mainland's largest non-State-owned developer and operator of underground shopping centers, will sell shares at about a third less than an earlier price range to attract investors to its initial public offering (IPO).

The company is now selling 3 billion new shares, or a 15 percent stake, at HK$1.13 each in the Hong Kong offering, it said in a statement to the city's stock exchange yesterday. The price is as much as 34 percent below the HK$1.40 to HK$1.71 offering range it set last month.

Renhe, based in the northeastern city of Harbin, priced the shares below the previous range because of "the current turmoil in international capital markets and adverse market conditions", according to the statement.

Renhe, which delayed pricing of the shares from Oct 9, is trying to escape the fate of the more than 200 companies worldwide that have delayed or canceled IPOs this year as the worst financial crisis since the 1930s has roiled stock markets and reduced investors' appetites for new shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The MSCI World Index has slumped more than 20 percent since Sept 8, when Renhe began gauging demand for the share sale.

Renhe received orders for about 7.3 percent of the 300 million shares it initially reserved for Hong Kong individuals and institutions through the local retail portion of the IPO, it said in another statement to the stock exchange.

In the heady days of Hong Kong IPOs in October last year, Alibaba.com Ltd, operator of the mainland's largest trading website for companies, drew orders from Hong Kong individuals for about 266 times the number of shares initially on offer to them.

Renhe has also delayed the expected first day of trading of its shares on the stock exchange by a week to Oct 22, it said in a third statement to the exchange yesterday.

BOC International (Holdings), HSBC Holdings Plc, Morgan Stanley and UBS AG are managing the sale.

Bloomberg

(HK Edition 10/15/2008 page3)